


to think that we could stay the same

by teatrolley



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ian Gallagher-centric, M/M, POV Ian Gallagher, POV Mickey Milkovich, also this is a s6 au but we say fuck that to s6 canon, dealing with trauma and shit, not bc its terrible but bc its already been worked with and we wanted to try something new, or to most of it, season 6 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:53:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24878761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teatrolley/pseuds/teatrolley
Summary: The first day he draws a bath which he thinks no one has done in this house in years, and then he sinks his head under, closing his eyes and listening to the sound of his own blood whooshing in his ears. The second he looks at his phone, opening up the call history and scrolling back a couple of weeks to when it first began; all of it bleeding red. Mick (4). Mick (2). Mick (5). Mick (2)OR: another post-breakup au, but Mickey gets out of prison, Caleb doesn't exist, and we get really into their past and Ian’s (struggling) head
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 301
Kudos: 398





	1. 1 – Ian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know that everyone and their mother have already done this, but here are my selling points: i love grief and trauma. enjoy!
> 
> asdfgh no but really. if you follow me on [tumblr](https://himick.tumblr.com) you will not be surprised that this is a thing i've been doing. like listen. i just so desperately wanted to read something that dove into ian's feelings post the breakup and also him and mickey's collective trauma, so i wrote it! (or i tried)
> 
> couple of housekeeping points:  
> – title is from mitski's two slow dancers  
> \- a first draft of this is already written so you'll get updates somewhat frequently. a couple of times a week? idk i don't have a schedule yet  
> \- although this fic focuses a lot on ian it is told through a dual pov, so you'll get to hear from mickey next and then for half the time!  
> \- if you're very very mad at ian you might not like this, but hey. you're still welcome to give it a try!

Ian can’t deal with it all, so Fiona fixes it.

Isn’t that how it’s always been? Isn’t that what he used to joke about with her, when he was younger and bright-haired and still had hope, not much idea of what the world could do of bad to him yet? _Jesus, Fiona_ , he remembers saying. _If all you want is to be needed, then congratulations. You’ve got yourself a job for life with this joker._

So she's needed now, and she steps up. Finds out which jail they threw Mickey and Sammi in. Sets up a date to speak with him. Sits at at the kitchen table, holding Debbie's hand while Debbie cries about not knowing the roofie would almost kill her, and Ian is stuck at the kitchen counter, staring at the coffee pot and wanting the world to fall away.

It’s been twenty-four hours since they broke up. Ian feels numb in that way where it’s easier to look away, which maybe is what he’s doing by staring at the drip of coffee instead of looking at them. He thought it would fix more than this; make it easier. It doesn't really seem to be working out like that.

Eventually Debbie calms down and goes upstairs to shower. It leaves him and Fiona alone downstairs, and after a moment of pause where he thinks she’s trying to cope, she walks up to where he’s standing still and touches his cheek. This way she does now that she thinks he’s fragile.

“You okay, sweetface?” she asks.

“Mickey and I broke up.”

He might as well tell her. It’s what he’s been thinking of, standing here and staring while she’s talked herself dead.

“What?” she asks. 

“Right before Sammi came.”

“He did that?”

“No, I did it.”

That makes her worry her lip, and he suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. At least this pure annoyance is a feeling he still has, although he’s also beginning to worry that it’s the only one left. So she tilts her head and he squares his jaw.

“So what did I do wrong now?”

“Ian, I don’t want to fight, okay?” she says, this horrible soothing voice, like talking to a wounded animal. “You just ran away with Monica. You think–?”

“We don’t have to talk about it.” Not about his mom again. Not about this, her trying to convince him that he’s wrong. “I just thought you should probably know.”

“You think he’ll snitch on Debbie?”

“No, he’s a Milkovich.”

_And he loves me. He just told me that_. Fiona wipes a hand over her face.

“Okay,” she says. “We still gotta do what we can, right? If Debbie’s a part of it.”

“They’ll want to pin it on him.”

“And what, you don’t care anymore?”

“I didn’t ask him to do this shit.” That comes out pretty pissed, which at least is a change from the numbness. “Get himself locked up, and for what?”

“You’re mad at him.”

“No.”

But it’s a terribly obvious lie. He is, and he walks upstairs to get away from her, and he is. Is fucking pissed off actually, on his bed with the door closed, back to his mattress although he wishes he could punch something.

_Fuck you, Mickey_ , he thinks. _Fuck you for doing this dumbass shit and getting yourself caught, getting yourself thrown in jail, throwing your fucking life away. For me_. That’s the biggest thing. _Fuck you for doing that shit for me, like it’s anything I’d ever want._

But he can’t say that to Mickey now, because Mickey isn’t here, and even if they were talking it wouldn’t change anything. He would still be stuck in jail, and Ian would still resent him to cover up what he really feels, and nothing would be made of anything.

Maybe that’s why he turns over instead to go to sleep.

*

Over the next couple of days, he occupies himself with doing things that amount to nothing.

The first day he draws a bath which he thinks no one has done in this house in years, and then he sinks his head under, closing his eyes and listening to the sound of his own blood whooshing by in his ears.

The second he looks at his phone, opening up the call history and scrolling back a couple of weeks to when it first began; all of it bleeding red. Mick (4). Mick (2). Mick (5). Mick (2). Then, the police station and nothing for a couple days, before the outgoing ones. Mick (2), also red, the time after the hospital when he didn’t pick up. Ian closes out of the app before he has to look at the way the story repeats.

On the third day he sits on the couch with Liam, watching the TV. It’s quiet in the house with Sammi gone. With Debbie with Derek and Lip at school and Fiona at Gus’s to water his plants or maybe at fucking Sean’s; who even knows anymore. And Carl is in juvie, running the joint, but Liam is here, so Ian has made him fruit to eat while they sit.

The first day he came back from Monica’s, Fiona came into him and Liam’s room with a handful of pills for him and then she stood by, waiting for him to swallow them down. He did, but when she left, he spit them out. Looked at them in his palm, all the same shade of ghostly white against his pale skin. Then changed his mind and put them back again.

The next day he flushed them in the bathroom. It's not like he's made a decision yet.

Now he's sitting here. By his brother's side, staring blankly at the Animal Planet program which Liam's always loved until it switches over to commercials; the first one for some citrus-scented bathroom cleaning shit. They're on the third one when the door opens behind them and Lip steps in.

He’s got a laundry bag thrown over his shoulder, a tired look on his face. The first thing he does once he's in the room is ruffle Liam's hair.

“Hey buddy,” he says, as Liam turns around to watch him.

“Lip!”

“Yeah, I missed you too.”

Ian doesn’t look at them, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be seen.

“Hey man,” Lip goes on, fake nonchalance as he squeezes Ian's shoulder. “How you doing?”

“Fine.”

They wait for more which won’t come.

“So I got some news from Fiona,” Lip goes on, braving the waters anyway. “Apparently Mickey’s case isn’t even going to court. They’ve got nothing substantial on him, so the charges were dropped this morning.”

More quiet.

“You hear what I said? He’s getting out.”

“Good for him.”

Lip scoffs.

“Yeah, okay. Whatever, then.” And to Liam: “Come on, buddy. Let’s go to the kitchen and make you some lunch, huh?”

“I made him fruit,” Ian says. Not that it really matters, and not that Lip replies. Instead Ian sits and watches it as the two of them walk away, into the kitchen until Ian can’t see them anymore.

He doesn’t want to talk to anyone about it because he doesn’t know what the fuck he’d say. They’d question him, which he doesn’t want, or ask if he’s alright, which he doesn’t know the answer to. They’d want him to speak and he won’t; even less now than before, although in some ways he thinks he might have always been like this. He never wants to talk to anyone, except maybe fucking Mickey, but that's been messed up now too.

He doesn’t really think before he does it. He never really thinks before he does it; the whole running away. This time all he needs to do is put his shoes on and walk out the door.

He knows where he’s going before he leaves. He’s walked this road so many times, this last full summer especially, back and forth between the Gallagher and Milkovich houses. When he’s standing in front of it, it looks just the same, despite the fact that Ian was running the last time he saw the place. Maybe that makes it fitting. Running from and running to.

It’s kind of stupid, obviously. Mickey might be getting out, but it’s not like he’s here yet, but it’s not like that’s the point. If he was, Ian probably wouldn’t have come. Instead he uses the key to the place that he still has, right there in his bundle along with all the rest. Instead he walks into the empty house and stands in the middle of the room.

It’s so quiet now. He’s always known it to be filled which so much sound, Mandy or Iggy or Yev, screaming his little head off that time he was growing his first tooth. The baby-chair is still there, by the couch, and Ian sinks down next to it, touching the fabric on the side which is soft and reminds Ian of him.

God, he misses the baby smell. His little feet and everything else, so clear in his mind. Memories from before but mostly from the runaway trip, the car and then the store and the fear he still remembers that someone would take him away.

He loves that kid; he does. Because he's a baby and because his eyes look just like Mickey's and most of all, Ian thinks, because he has to. Because that's the only way he could deal with the blanket-covered couch. 

By the time he came back from the army fiasco, someone had rotated the living room. Ian never asked, but he wondered if it was Mickey. Wondered if Mickey got sick to his stomach from looking at it too.

He can’t think about that now though. Hasn’t really thought of it yet, managed to avoid it by running off to the army and then into a manic state, which was nice for the way it made it so damn easy to look away. He thought of it while he was stuck in the bed a little, but mostly of nothing, and then that left too when mania came back.

In some ways it's hard to remember if any of it was real.

It was though, and as he moves more around, he’s confronted with that reality. In the kitchen, where they made food and changed Yevgeny’s diaper and fished out hundreds of beers from the fridge. Beers which they shared with each other and tasted when they kissed.

Next, the bedroom, so different than it was before he ran to the army, equipped with the new bed which was bought for the groom and the bride but was only ever theirs. Which they slept in, together, night and night again.

Ian touches the duvet cover, bed unmade like Mickey had been sleeping in it before Ian called him over for the breakup. On the floor, he sees some of his clothes, knows more’s in the drawers, and he touches that too.

He could take it all back if he wanted. He’ll need it at some point. But right now, that seems too cruel, to leave Mickey to come home to a house he’s removed himself from, so he doesn’t. Instead he rises from the bed again and steals a beer from the fridge and walks back out the door, leaving the place as if it was visited by a ghost. Maybe it was.

He doesn’t go home after that. Instead he goes to the dugouts where he'd led them once before, trying with all his might to go back to better days. This time there's not a chance for it to work, but he lies down on the dewy grass and looks up anyway.

_Jesus Christ,_ he remembers Mickey saying the first time. _You wanna split a pint, get out, and look for shooting stars next?_

_Yeah, Mick_ , he thinks now as he looks at the stars. _I do._

But they're just dreams of the past. Dreams of who he was back then, before it all collapsed. Dreams of who they were, which is not who they are now.

He drinks his beer and he gets drunk, the way he does on the meds. The buzz of it keeps him warm, which is good. He doesn’t go home.

*

The thing is, maybe everyone’s right. Maybe he is like Monica. He was there anyway, and he saw what her life was like, and he looked at his phone with the picture of him and Mickey framed against the stars, and he knew this was what he had to do.

Maybe it’s just another way he’s become a runner though, but that doesn’t really matter. He’d done enough before for that to be who he is now, to the army and to his mom and to Florida and then to his mom again. Maybe this is a part of it too, wanting to just hit the reset button on everything, set it all aflame and walk away as it burns, and wanting even more for Mickey to do the same to him. To be rid of the guilt and responsibility that comes with being loved.

Mickey won’t though, that much they all know, and maybe that’s a part of why Ian resents him a little. Maybe it’s just that everything makes him feel like shit these days.

When Mickey gets out the next day, Fiona makes him come in the car to pick him up.

It’s cold, which is good, because it makes it so much easier not to remember the other time Ian stood and waited for Mickey to be released from the joint.

He looks the same when he does come out as the day when they broke up. Looks tense, shoulders all hunched up like he’s on high alert, which he always is, except when they’re alone. Looks just as fucking tired, circles under his eyes, and Ian feels that familiar pang of guilt at the thought that waiting around for Ian to finish his runaway stunt was just as stressful for him as being fucking locked up. He’s wearing the same clothes too, and Ian wants really badly to touch the sleeve of his shirt, but he knows that he won’t.

He doesn’t really want to be here. Doesn’t really want to look at him, instead remembering his mantras from the last few months. _I'm not supposed to be here. I'm tired. Leave me alone_. But there he is anyway.

“Hey,” Mickey says when they're eye to eye, this questioning thing like he’s not sure where they stand. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“Yeah," Ian says. "Fiona made me."

“Right.” He can tell that’s a letdown. “Which fucking car are we getting in then?”

Ian points to the right one. The one Fiona’s waiting in.

“Great.”

And then he walks away, not waiting for Ian’s lead and not waiting to make sure he follows. That’s good though; more familiar to Ian than these other things have been. For a long time being with Mickey was being like playing a game with loading issues, having to stand by sometimes while Mickey locked back up, like the game was buffering. But maybe it’s Ian’s turn to be the circling wheel now.

He follows to the car and gets in. Fiona sends him a look in the rearview mirror, clearly disappointed that they didn’t reunite in a sweeping kiss which could take him off her hands again, but Ian just ignores her. From outside it might be funny; the two of them sulking on the backseat.

“So where am I dropping you off?” she asks.

“The Milkovich house, I guess.”

“Okay.” As she starts up the engine, she sends Ian another look, but he ignores it just as before. “Well, off we go then.”

To be fair to her, she’s trying. More than Ian, anyway, who isn’t doing anything, and more than Mickey who seems to be a ripe combination of pissed and sad and uninterested in airing it out in front of Fiona, which has him sitting silent on the half-hour ride back too. Ian just looks out the window, the sky this strange shade of happy blue, as the neighborhood changes from shitty to fine and back to shitty again. By the time they pull up to the pavement, no one has said a thing.

“We’re here,” Fiona says, herculean in her efforts. Then she turns around from the front seat. “If you need anything, Mickey–”

“Yeah, whatever. Thanks for the ride.”

He looks at Ian for a moment like he’s considering saying something, but then he shakes his head. Gets out of the car.

“You’re getting out too,” Fiona says to Ian then.

“What?”

“Look, I might have set a fucking crap example for you, but I’m at least attempting to be a better person now. You might not love him anymore–”

“Okay, whatever. I’m getting out.”

And he does, to Mickey’s clear surprise, although he flips Fiona off too as she leaves the parking spot. Mickey has made it onto the porch, but he’s standing still, looking at him, and Ian tries not to think of how their positions are now reversed.

“You’re Little Miss Sunshine today, huh?” Mickey says, his willingness to speak seemingly returned now that they’re alone. Ian just shrugs. “You coming inside?”

“Don’t think I should.”

"Whatever, man." He shakes his head, like Ian is tiring him. But then he seems to change his mind. "Jesus Christ, Ian. You're really being a dick, you know?"

Ian does. He sees himself from the outside, the way he does most days, and he knows that the red-haired version of him who visited Mickey in juvie would wonder what was going wrong. Would look at him without recognition at all. Maybe that's why he looks down.

"Sorry," he says. But it comes out in a whisper, and Mickey shakes his head. 

He's clearly upset. Agitated and mad, but not just that. Sad too, or maybe heartbroken, the way he looked in the Gallagher garden that day, glistening eyes while Ian stood with the knife in his hands. He doesn't want to do it again. Is not sure he could say yes if Mickey asked him now if he really meant it. Thinks he would rather bite his tongue and swallow down the blood.

He doesn't speak then. Just looks at Mickey with a clenched jaw and a lump in his throat, while Mickey looks back.

"What are you doing, Ian? Would you even have come if Fiona hadn't asked you to?"

Ian shrugs.

"We're broken up," he tries, mostly because he doesn't want to answer with the truth: that he doesn't really know.

"I was in there for you."

"Not really. In what world would I have liked you torturing my sister?"

"Like you actually give a shit."

"I do," Ian says, more energy now as he gets to lean on the anger instead of on the grief. "I give a shit about you getting yourself locked up again."

“I _didn’t_ get myself locked up.”

“I did it, Mickey,” he says. “I _did_ steal a helicopter. I _did_ go AWOL. She wasn't lying to them.”

“You were sick–”

"Fuck you."

Mickey shakes his head like he's mad, which maybe he is. Ian is mad anyway, unable to stop thinking about sitting in that fucking room and being told by his family that he can't take care of himself. That he's a nut-job, like their mother, who they all hate by the way. That he shouldn't be held responsible for anything that he did, like he's not a real person anymore, just a fucking brain with a disease. That he's ruined their lives already, and that he'll probably ruin it more.

"Come on," Mickey says, but Ian shakes his head too.

"I want to go home," he says.

He never does that. In fact, he thinks he can count it on one hand: the times in which he's actually asserted what he wanted to anyone, let alone to someone he loves. Now he's stubborn about it, staring at Mickey who looks back, expression morphing from what it was into something horribly kind instead.

"Okay," he says, and Ian kind of wants to lean over and puke, when he thinks about how it's the first time in months that anyone's actually listened to him. "I can walk you?"

He shakes his head.

"Ian–"

But Ian leaves before he can say anything else.

That night before the end while he was running with his mom, he laid in the grass and looked at the picture of them on his phone which showed up with Mickey’s call. Inside the van, Monica and her meth-dealing boyfriend were screaming at each other, and it was hard not to take that shit like a sign. Hard not to feel like his family was probably fucking right.

So he keeps walking, and Mickey doesn’t come out after him. At least that’s one part of them that’s back to how it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay guys don't look at me i know that this is kind of depressing and also kind of nooo ian don't be mean 😢 but to be fair ian's depressed and also we're going on a journey okay, i swear it'll get better if you stick with me here! 
> 
> in the meantime, leave me a comment about what you thought? also follow me on tumblr [here](https://himick.tumblr.com)


	2. 2 – Mickey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we're in mickey's head and him and ian talk again... ish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everybody, we're back! i'm glad you all seem so excited by this, i'm excited too!! like i said this is dual pov so this time we get to delve into mickey's head. enjoy!

So that went fucking great.

Mickey stands on the inside of the door to the Milkovich house, and wipes his hand over his face.

Honestly, he didn't mean to get upset at him. He had time to think in jail after that crazy bitch tried to shoot him, and that's what he was thinking about. When he got out, he would talk to him. Run after him like a bitch or whatever, the way he failed to do before, although not neccesarily to get with him. Ian needs time? Fine, Ian can have time. Ian wants a break? Well, technically he's allowed. But there's no way in hell that Mickey's just gonna let that be it.

The thing is, Ian is acting like a dick, for sure. But Mickey acted like a dick before for years, and Ian stood by him, and anyway Ian also looks so fucking dead in the face these days that it's hard to hold it against him. These are probably the worst months he'll go through in his life. 

Mickey probably shouldn't have gotten mad at him then. Not when Ian's so easy to spook these days anyway; a high-strung creature ready to run off at pretty much anything. A boy who needs some kindness; the kind that his family's too tired to give after Monica. An eighteen-year-old who used to be floppy-haired kid.

Fuck.

Mickey feels like crap, mostly about this but also because it wasn't exactly peachy being in big boy jail.

It's been a while since he's had to tense up the way that place made him have to do. A while since he had to look for his dad in other people's faces, worried about the combination of knowledge about him and already looking at time in the joint and where it could lead.

It's made him long for this last summer where everyone knew, his brothers and his fake wife and even the fucking Gallaghers, and no-one gave a shit. It's made him remember just how fragile a peace like that can be.

And now he's here again. 

The house is so empty, air so thick with the quiet that it's practically standing still. Dust moves in a stream of light from the kitchen window, DNA from a time in which the sun shone through.

Apparently Svetlana took their fight during the Ian fiasco seriously, because she's gone, now living in the Alibi top room. Who knows where Iggy is, but he's been gone since around then too, so now Mickey walks into an empty house to see everything pretty much where he left it. Yevgeny's baby chair still by the couch, shit still littering the dining table. He walks past to look into the bedroom, and yeah: Ian's shit is all in there. Clothes in the drawers, toothbrush in the bathroom.

Mickey closes the door to the room and goes to the fridge instead.

He's alone. Physically more alone than he's ever fucking been, and mentally close to the level he felt in those months after the wedding, where he didn't sleep because Svetlana was in the bed with him. So he pops the cap off a beer and he sits down on the couch. He drinks until he's tipsy, then a little more, but not enough to end like when Ian was in the hospital. Instead he puts his feet up on the coffee table and leans back.

Fuck, he thinks to the ceiling. _Fuck_. And then he has to pinch the bridge of his nose to hold back tears.

Shit, he really is a pussy, but he's known that for a long time. Or maybe he's just a person who's been broken up with; a thought which makes him almost want to laugh. Mickey Milkovich, brought to his knees by a broken heart. But then that just kind of makes him want to cry too.

He's always been more emotional than was probably good for him. When he thinks back far enough, he remembers being a Momma's boy, maybe not holding her hand and shit because he already knew he shouldn't, but liking it whenever she was around. Wanting to spend time with her. To have her smile and call him Mick.

For a while there, with Ian, he thought his emotions were a good thing. They were wanted anyway, and every time he showed more, he got a reward. A big grin or a schooled smile or maybe even a kiss. Ian's fondness bleeding out of his eyes like a horror story, or that's how he thinks of it now, drowning in all the emotions that Ian set free. Sitting in this fucking empty room, lit up only by the TV.

They fucked on this couch. Never after, but the night before, the two of them just kids sitting side by side and smiling, trying to catch the other in it. He'd let Ian kiss him that night and he'd kissed him back, and when they broke apart to take their shirts off, they both fucking smiled.

Now he's here alone instead. And fuck if that doesn't make him want to punch the mirror again.

*

That's only the first day though. 

The thing is, Debbie was probably fucking right, Ian can't be drunk away, and even if she wasn't, Mickey has never had the kind of luxury of falling apart that the Gallaghers do.

In his life, no one is there to pick up the slack if you fail. Instead you can have a moment – a night of drinking or some held-back tears, a fistfight or a drive-by shooting of a shop you hate – but then you have to get back up again. Fuck, then you just have to deal with it, whatever it is; a fake wife or a kid you don't want or Ian losing his fucking mind.

It's possible in this neighborhood to keep an eye on him, mostly because everyone knows the Gallagher kids, so Mickey does. Hears from Kevin that he's started busting tables at Patsy's for Sean again, which he listens to while sipping his beer on an Alibi barstool, waiting for Svetlana to come down.

It's true that they got in a fight about Ian staying in the house, and that he didn't really see her for a while after that. She went to visit in jail though, nodding to the guards and saying you never know who's watching, and then she told him he had to get out of there. Immigration reasons but also for the kid, or whatever. And now she's asked him to babysit. 

When she does come down, she's wearing some fancy uniform which he guesses is for the new bar she's working at. She's also carrying the kid.

"You ask me to come here, the least you can do is not be late," he says, putting his beer-glass down.

"You should be happy I do not just give him to you. Diaper full of poop."

"Whatever."

But he still reaches out for the kid, taking him in his arms and holding him upright against his chest.

"He eats fruit now, remember?" she says, but he's looking more at him than at her. Remembering the last time he held him like this, walking out of the police station and trying to calm down. "Bread. Cereal."

"Relax, it's been three weeks. I know what he eats, I've fed him before."

"I'm busy until evening."

"Yeah, I was there when you said that."

She sighs at him, annoyed, and he can't really blame her. He's being about as pissy as he was in the beginning when Yevgeny was first born, which he hasn't been for a while what with domestic fucking bliss. It's a little hard to keep the smile up when his life is falling apart though.

"I will pick him up tonight."

"You do whatever you like."

She ignores him to lean over and kiss the kid's cheek goodbye, which he rolls his eyes at, but at least she doesn't kiss his, the way she started doing in those months where it all seemed to work between the three of them. Yevgeny smiles though, but he smiles at Mickey too, balling up his tiny fist and resting it to Mickey's chin.

He's so small but so heavy and so damn warm. He smells just the same as he did when Mickey got him back. When the police officer told him that he was a lucky man before he handed him the kid, and Mickey held him against his face to breathe him in. When Mickey was trying so hard not to cry about letting Ian go.

He doesn't really know how he feels these days. He can't claim he loves the kid, but for a while there he came to tolerate him, and to tolerate everything else too. It helped that Ian loves him, always wanting to hold him or take him out places or play with him. Really, it helped that Ian seemed to like the whole thing, organizing their life together and going as far as to strike up something halfway friendship-like with Svetlana, the two of them in the living room wearing fake mink and a too big suit.

Ian's not here now though, and instead Mickey stands in the Alibi with his kid. The kid that, on the one hand, is the reason for all of this, because if he hadn't been conceived, maybe this whole terrible thing would have been contained to that hour and not to all of this: Mickey married, Ian running away, and what's happened since. And the kid that, on the other hand, is smiling a tiny smile and is loved so much by Ian and is just a helpless human with Mickey's DNA.

It doesn't really matter anyway. Since Mickey doesn't have the option of saying no to him, then Mickey has to live with it. And today that means shifting his grasp so it's more secure and looking down at him.

"Well," he says, the whole thing feeling like a terrible cosmic joke. "Guess it's just you and me then."

He shakes his head to himself. But then he squares up his shoulders and keeps moving on.

*

The next week or so, life goes on.

Mickey keeps tabs on Ian but decides to leave him alone for a couple more days, thinking it might be easier to talk to him after they've gotten a little distance. Instead he occupies himself with whatever life he has without him, which isn't much now that he's out of the scamming jobs, but which does include Yevgeny and a house in need of some tidying up.

He doesn't think the house has been cleaned in a long time – certainly not by him – but it feels good to do it now; to get rid of all the clutter. Of the last Ian's suitcase shit. The last of Kenyatta's bathroom stuff. His own old nazi crap, given to him by his dad. The porn magazines with women in them. Everything he doesn't want.

There are other things he leaves though, carefully bypassing them as he cleans. Ian's clothes. Ian's toothbrush. Ian's soap. All the baby's shit. Mandy's room, which still stands mostly untouched.

He stands in the doorway and looks at it. Then sighs before he closes the door and turns back to the living room.

The kid has gotten bigger, even if Mickey said that three weeks didn't make a difference. Turns out that at this age they do a tiny bit, although maybe only enough that him and Svetlana and Ian would notice. Because they see him all the time. Because they're trained to pay attention.

He feeds him then, at the dining table, slices of bread and slices of fruit and pieces of cereal, like he's feeding a serial killer who eats that shit dry. Then he fixes his own lunch too.

It's weird to be on his own. If Ian was here, he'd do something stupid to make the kid do that giggly baby laugh, and Mickey would smile despite himself. He might do that thing where he kisses Mickey's cheek, or slaps his ass as he walks by. Might manage to take this huge fucking weight off Mickey's shoulder, easing it and making it all okay. Make him laugh, even, doing some stupid joke which really isn't funny but Mickey would still love. Make him feel like even if right now he dreads the future and resents the past and fears the present, then everything will turn out okay in the end.

That's what he did the last time he came back anyway. That's what he's always done.

_Fuck_. 

Mickey is back to having to pinch the bridge of his nose then. Swallow through the lump in his throat and take a moment to breathe.

He misses Ian.

So much. Misses him the same way he missed him while he was gone in the army, picture stuck to the mirror and this constant heavy heart that came with the guilt. Misses at least some version of him, the one who used to look at him and actually smile, but fuck, he even misses the one he is now. The one that's fucking pissed at him for everything it seems, at least for giving a shit. The one he still wants here now, willing to go through the anger if only it meant he had him close.

Maybe that's why, on the seventh day, he decides to give Patsy's a try.

It's a day where he's been tasked with babysitting again, but he figures that's probably good for his case, since Ian loves the kid. He straps him into the car in his baby-seat then, and brings that same seat with him to the booth when he sits down. A mom smiles at him from one of the window-seats, which is funny because it must mean she has no idea who he is. 

Ian comes out from the back room.

Their eyes catch immediately, like maybe there are magnets connected to them. Ian halts in his step when he sees him. Stares, like he didn't expect him there, a range of emotions passing over his face.

Mickey just raises his eyebrows at him; a challenge of the kind that Ian has rarely resisted.

It works. At least Ian comes over with his bucket for plates and starts busting Mickey's table, which Mickey chose because it was full of dirty shit. He doesn't speak though, but that's not really new.

"You're not gonna ask what I want?" Mickey asks instead.

"I'm not a waiter," Ian says.

He looks down at Yevgeny though, who's sitting in his seat, waving his tiny fist around. As he does, he gets that soft look he's always had with the baby – any baby, really – and then he reaches out to touch Yevgeny's cheek. Smiles a little, the first time in a while that Mickey's seen it.

"He's still alright?"

"Totally fine." Mickey's not surprised that Ian worries about this shit, although he thinks it's completely needless. "If he's gonna be fucked by anything, it's that his first word will be fuck."

He doesn't expect it really; not on a day like today. But that makes Ian smile again, bright for one wonderful second in time.

He stops it again, quickly, like he didn't mean to let himself go. But Mickey's already smiling back.

_You love me_ , he thinks. _I know you do. You're just being dumb right now._

There's something he's been remembering. That moment at the dugouts, Ian following up all his pissed off energy by taking him there as if he was trying to recreate this other moment from their past. Hitting him, sure, but also begging for things to go back. Kissing Mickey so deeply once they got their clothes off, jumping on his back on the way home, and then wanting to go on a date.

You don't go from that to not loving someone in a week, which is why Mickey still knows the truth. Hell, even while Ian was breaking up with him, he was talking about himself; his brain and his future and Mickey wanting to fix him, which Mickey doesn't. Really, he just wants to help. But he takes it as another clue. That all of this is more about Ian than it is about them. 

He keeps that knowledge safe in his chest. Nurtures it close, which is why he's not deterred when Ian takes back his hand.

"Need to go back to work," he says, but it comes out more like an apology than a demand.

"Sure, because the place is fucking crowded right now."

There's practically no one in there. Ian looks around, expression like it's the first time he's actually seeing anything, but only shrugs.

"Fiona's already busting my ass for being bad at the job," he says. "Like it's not her own fault that I am. She's the one forcing me on pretty heavy lithium."

"You taking them?" Mickey asks. That's a surprise, but a happy one, although Ian obviously doesn't seem to be feeling the same way.

"More like having them force-fed."

"That bad, huh?"

"Every day. Did you take your meds, Ian? Remember work, Ian? Do you need a ride? Don't worry, I'll have my live-in boyfriend who's also your fucking boss give you one either way, because that's not the kind of decision you can make yourself anymore."

That comes out quick and pent up. Then Ian looks at him as if he's remembering where he is, catching himself again.

"Anyway–"

He grabs the bucket as if he's going to leave.

"Wait," Mickey says. "We're not gonna talk?"

"What is there to talk about?"

"I don't know, the fact that I was in jail?" Mickey says. "What happened when you ran away with your mom?"

"My mom was my mom."

"Great. I don't know what the fuck that means, Ian."

"She was living with a teenage meth-dealer."

Ian looks down after that, in a way that lets Mickey know that that part's important. Probably the whole thing is, if what he's heard around the Gallagher house is anything to go by. All of them wounded by Monica, scared that Ian will be the same. And fuck, Mickey trusts that Ian will do better than her, because Ian is someone who has ideas of goodness and tries to live up to them, but he still understands. He remembers it anyway, how Ian came running to him that time she returned. How he caught him up the summer after, on the night he got out of juvie. _My mom tried to kill herself_. 

"I don't want to talk about it."

"You don't want to tell me what happened?"

"Nothing happened," Ian says. "We went there, it sucked, I came back again."

Okay, so he doesn't want to talk. Fine then. That's okay.

The thing is, Mickey can't really decide if he's being brave or pathetic, sitting here and trying to get Ian to speak, but then that's probably something that Ian has felt before. Mickey remembers it all anyway. _Would you at least look at me?_ S _o that’s it? We’re over? Your dad beats the shit out of us, and you’re just gonna get married, no conversation? Nothing?_ And if Ian could do that, then Mickey can sit in this diner like a bitch and look at him now.

"Look," he says. "I thought it about it all inside, and fine. You need time, you can have time, you don't gotta hang out with me or tell me what's going on. But I have a say too, and I'm not just giving up."

That makes Ian look at him, maybe for the first time that whole day. His eyes are big. Growing.

"You and me, Ian," Mickey says to him. "This can't just be it. Can it?"

Ian looks down. His jaw works, clenching and unclenching, as if the emotions are too strong to be contained inside, and Mickey watches it. This boy with the beautiful red hair and the sad, pale face who he really fucking loves. Then Ian shrugs.

"I'm at work, Mick."

But when he looks up to meet Mickey's eyes, there's something alive in them, and all Mickey can think of is that he didn't say yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oooh things are happening. what do we all think? personally i'm trying not to copy s6 but go with the spirit of some of the things happening in it, which means that mickey's mindset here is inspired by 6x01 and s7 where he's like. the saint of sympathy asdfgh
> 
> anyway i love me reading some comments so leave them all below! also if you want to chat you can find me on tumblr [here](https://himick.tumblr.com)


	3. 3 – Ian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ladies.... i'm sorry but it's rock bottom time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who's back, back again, it's me! and also ian! 
> 
> this is probably the chapter in this that borrows the most heavily from s6 canon, specially 6x02 and 6x03, both in terms of ian's emotional state and some actual scenes (although i've changed them around so the dialogue and stuff isn't directly lifted from it). you'll know it when you see it! hope you enjoy!

The thing that no one knows is that Monica still calls him sometimes.

The first time it happened was on the second day after him and Mickey had broken up. It was two am when his phone rang, switched to silent but still lighting up the room. For a moment he considered letting it be, but then he slipped out to the bathroom, picking it up alone.

 _Hey baby_ , she'd said. _You left? Where did you go?_

_I've been gone for two days._

He'd said that with the same empty voice he always uses these days. 

_I know,_ she'd said back _. I just couldn't find my phone._

He'd shaken his head at that. Felt angry, a little bit, and weirdly fond too. Felt like he didn't really know what to say to any of it.

 _Okay. Well, I love you._ She always tells him that. _But look, I have to go, okay? I'll call you later._

_Sure, mom._

She didn't, of course. Not for a while. Not that he really expected her to, knowing by now that Monica promises never really count, but wanting to believe in it a little bit anyway. To think that there was a world in which she could follow through on what she said. And who knows, maybe you can love someone without knowing how to show it.

Now she leaves him a voicemail. It's a long, rambling, weird thing, her going on and on about a new business idea, and he thinks it's kind of interesting how he never felt sick but how it's so easy for him to tell whenever she is. Or maybe she's just high. Either way he listens to the whole thing twice without really knowing why, and then he hides his phone beneath his pillow, guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach like he's done something wrong.

He's angrier at her now. At how he'd asked her to help him run away and she'd actually done it, bringing him to that terrible place and fighting with her meth-dealer boyfriend about him. At how she always speaks of love and never does anything about it other than leave them again. At the things she encouraged him to do. Mickey, but also these other, terrible things that he can't really speak of yet. At the things he's done in the name of love whenever he was really looking for hers.

She's not the only one he's angry at these days.

It's a general emotion now, slowly setting in. At Lip, who keeps talking about his new professor girlfriend like that's not completely nuts, or at Sean and Fiona and their new, stupid relationship that they're both so fucking smug about. At Fiona, again, for counting his meds that morning, like he doesn't know how to at least take them out of the bottle if he's gonna skip.

And then there's Mickey. Still.

It stresses him out that he won't let go. That it couldn't just be easy, this one conversation that would stop the whole thing; free him from all the guilt, or the sense that he's too much, or all of Mickey's warning and wanting that he can't fucking meet. That Mickey asked him last time if that could really be it, and Ian couldn't get himself to say that it could.

He just wanted things to be easier. But they're not, and instead he's pissed off at Mickey too, because if he wasn't, he doesn't know what he'd have to be instead.

Then Mickey shows up at Patsy's again.

Ian is out front busting a table when it happens. There's no Yevgeny today, and maybe that makes it easier to keep the anger going, or to let it flare up at the thought that he's back, although he's not sure he'd have a problem even if the baby was there. A lot of things that used to stop him don't really anymore. 

He doesn't walk up to him. Instead he walks out the back with the bucket, dropping it into the sink so hard the shit it in clatters. Fiona is out there too, testing the chicken's temperature with her stupid thermometer, but now she turns to him.

"Hey, easy," she says.

"Sorry."

But he doesn't really mean it. It's just habit at this point, something he goes around saying to everyone these days. Mickey was probably right when they picked him up from prison. He's kind of being a dick.

Fiona looks out the cutout now, then turns back to him.

"You see that Mickey's out there?"

"Yeah, I have eyes," he says. She sighs at him, this thing she's started doing whenever he decides to be like this. Soldiers on though.

"You two talking again?"

"No," Ian says.

"Well, bring him a piece of pie on the house. The cherry's fresh and warm."

"I'm not going out there," he says.

"What?"

"I don't want to talk to him."

That makes her stop to look at him.

The thing is, no one actually fucking listens to him anymore. They try to decide what's best for him. They nag him about shit. They want him to take his meds and go back to Mickey and be quiet, good Ian who never makes a fuss. They want him to stop being difficult and go back to being the middle child; easy to ignore.

Well, maybe he thinks he's earned himself a little acting out. Fuck, when Fiona was doing it, he was there trying to trace her steps to the cup guy's brother's house, but apparently there are limits to who gets to be loud and who just has to play nice. And apparently Ian is out of his allowance for the first kind.

"It's your job, Ian," Fiona says, like he already knew she would. They just look at each other, him with his jaw squared up. "Look, there's only so many leniencies I can give. You're late, you're slow. Everyone else is noticing too."

"So what?"

"So, I'm the manager."

"Assistent manager."

She tilts her head, and he rolls his eyes. He picks the bucket up though.

"Fine," he says. "Look."

But when he walks out to the tables again he's mad and demonstrative and setting the bucket down in front of Mickey. Hard.

"What the fuck, man? Be careful." Ian doesn't reply, but busts his table, loud, careless with the plates in a way that's demonstrative towards Fiona too, because he knows she's watching him. So what if they fucking break. "Hey, are you listening to me? You're gonna hurt yourself."

Ian just looks at him. 

To be honest, this has always been one of his least favorite traits of Mickey's; this annoying fucking ability to pretend like everything's peachy when the world is falling apart. _Just because I'm getting hitched don't mean we can't bang. You don't fuck Angie? God damn Gallagher, I gotta get you pissed off more often_ , before he got married anyway. Fuck you, Mickey, Ian thinks now, as he takes the bucket back in his hands. 

"Wait, you okay?" Mickey says, but Ian just leaves, back to the kitchen where he sets down the bucket and turns back to Fiona.

"Good enough?" he says.

"Maybe you should talk to him."

"Oh my God."

He knows he's digging his own grave. He knows that he's the asshole or at least one of them, short fucking fuse even at the people who are just trying to help. He knows that a month ago he punched Mickey in the face for daring to give a shit, and that that's a bad look for him, but he also knows that he's got so much anger bubbling in him he might explode if he doesn't let it out in some way.

"Can't I just choose this one fucking thing?" he says. "I'll take my meds, I'll go to the doctor whenever you want. Fuck, I'll tell Debbie to get a fucking abortion because _you_ want me to. At least let me decide about this on my own."

"You're yelling," Fiona says.

"Well, guess you have to fire me then."

"Ian–"

"Or maybe I quit."

He's only just thought it to himself when he says it. He means it though, even more when they just stare at each other.

He's never been at odds with her like this before. Maybe with Lip, but not with his big sister, but then again, he's never been anything he is now before. Maybe that's why she stares back. Then shrugs.

"Fine," she says. He's not sure he expected that, but he sure as fuck won't back down.

"Fine," he says.

"Fine."

And then it is fine because he goes through with it, taking his apron off and throwing it to the ground in the employee changing room, fishing out his shit and pushing past her towards the door.

 _Fuck_.

"Really?" she yells after him, but he's already gone, door swinging shot behind him as he leaves.

Instead of walking on, he crosses into the alley behind the building and kicks at one of the trashcans. _Fuck_ , he thinks. _Fuck_. But Mickey, of course, is not gonna let this go either.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he says, coming into the alley after him .

"Just go away, Mickey."

"What's happening with you guys? You're yelling at Fiona, Carl is walking around with some juvie thug on the streets, and Debbie is coming to Svet, trying to borrow Yev for a day at school."

That's news to Ian, which distracts him a little.

"What?"

"Something about wanting to prove to Fiona that she can? She's pregnant?" 

"And not getting rid of it."

"Yeah, I gathered that from your screaming match in there."

The reference pulls Ian back to real life again. Back to himself, standing here in the Patsy's alley after walking out on his sister, quitting his fucking job. Looking at Mickey, who's looking at him, concerned face above his stupid, sleeveless shirt that he cuts himself and that Ian has always looked at and found sort of sweet.

To be honest, Ian is mad at him in a way he can't explain. At first he could latch onto the getting locked up, but now that he's exhausted that it's just a floundering thing. He's mad at Mickey for being here. Mad at Mickey for trying to help. Mad at Mickey for being kind and devoted and not letting go and really, he's probably just mad at himself.

"What are you doing here?" he says.

"I was planning on eating some pie before you made me almost loose an eye, throwing plates around."

"Don't be fucking smart."

"Well, what do you want me to say? You're setting your life on fire and I thought it might be nice to check up on you once in a while. Make sure your fuckhead's okay."

"That's not your job anymore. And I thought you said I didn't have to hang out with you."

"Alright, man." Mickey shakes his head, clearly pissed too, which is not really a surprise. They know each other so well that they know the right places to push. "Don't be a fucking dick, huh? I'll go home, so you can calm your tits. No need to over-exert your voice by yelling at me too."

And then he does actually go. In fact, he turns around, shaking his head while he does it, and it's only while he's leaving that Ian catches onto the fact that he doesn't want him to go.

He's agitated and angry and emotional. And usually when he is those things, he solves it by having sex.

"Mickey," he calls after him. And Mickey turns around.

"What?"

But then he must catch onto Ian's expression. At least he smirks a little; straightens up with confidence. Raises his brows in a challenge, and licks his lips.

"What?"

So Ian kisses him.

Fuck, Ian kisses him. Practically tongue first, deep into Mickey's mouth, hand on his cheeks and movement which pushes them up against the wall. Mickey's smirking into it like he's so fucking pleased, and God, it feels good. Feels right, Mickey's palm on his jaw and down to the neck of his t-shirt. Shit. His tongue in Ian's mouth.

Ian is getting hard in his jeans. Fast. Fucking fast. And he _wants_ , fucking desperately. Wants to get on his knees or to lick Mickey's skin or to turn him around and fuck him and just forget it all. And Mickey seems to want it too.

“Over there,” he says. “We’ll be covered.”

So Ian guides them there, kissing him the whole time, up against a different brick. And _fuck_ , yeah they're covered now, and Ian fucking groans when Mickey uses that as a chance to pull him in, their hips sliding together. Mickey is hard too, and Ian works on his belt to get in there while Mickey works on his.

"You got–?"

"In my wallet," Mickey says. A condom, a small packet of lube. While Ian gets it out, Mickey turns around.

They really shouldn't be doing this here. They really shouldn't be doing this, period, but they've done it before in the back room at the Kash and Grab or the back room at the wedding, on fields and in Mickey's room with his family next door, on the bed with the door wide open. So maybe they're not the smartest, and Ian doesn't intend today to be the day they change that. Not when it feels this good.

"Fuck, Mick," he says, against Mickey's shoulder, and Mickey reaches behind himself to the back of Ian's head.

"Move," he says. So Ian moves. 

It's quick. Really quick, Mickey’s body starting to tense the way it does before he comes after barely more than a minute or two, which drives Ian so wild that he reaches his edge too.

They finish at nearly the same time. Groan together and use the fucking wall to hold themselves up, both of Mickey’s hands against it and Ian against his. Then they breathe out for a moment, Ian panting on Mickey’s neck.

"Fuck, that was good," Mickey says. The same way he used to say it at the dugouts. The bleachers. "Never done it in an alley before."

"Not true," Ian says. "Don't you remember that time we were running away from Ned?"

“That doesn’t count as an alley.”

Ian snorts.

“Okay.”

He pulls out then, leans out a little, and Mickey turns around again. Smirk on his face which turns into a smile when he watches Ian's face.

Fuck, Ian thinks.

He didn't mean to do this. Didn't mean to lose his fucking mind just because Mickey was looking at him a certain way, but then again at least that's in line with who he's always been. But fuck, this is messy, and doesn't solve anything, and he's not really sure what to do about it now.

Mickey is ahead of him though, like he can see it one his face, but isn't Mickey always now? So while Ian is freaking out, Mickey reaches to caress his cheek with his thumb. Resigned, sad smile on his face. Then he pats it like he's letting it go.

"Relax, tough guy," he says. "I'm not some flowery maiden."

"Mick."

But Mickey is already buckling up his belt. Then looking up at Ian again, so tender, which Ian doesn't fucking get because he's pretty sure that he's adding another tick to the acting-like-a-fucking-dick list. But instead of getting mad, Mickey touches him again – his hair, which he pushes out of his face – and then he pulls back.

“See you later, okay?” 

_Wait_ , Ian wants to say. _I’m sorry. Please stay._

But he doesn’t. Instead he watches Mickey’s back as Mickey goes, and when he rounds the corner, he looks down at his own terrible hands.

The thing is, he has to be angry. Because whenever the anger wanes, it reveals what's underneath. And Ian is not sure he can stand to look at it.

*

To be honest, he pretty much feels worse after that. Feels like a fucking asshole, even if having sex in stupid moments is something they've done before, even when they haven't exactly been peachy with each other. Mickey's wedding comes to mind, _just because I'm getting hitched, doesn't mean we can't still bang._ But this still makes Ian feel like shit.

The thing is that he doesn't know who he is anymore.

He hasn't for a while, really. Sometimes these days he feels like he's standing next to a missing poster of himself, younger and wearing his buzzcut along with a happy smile. The way he looked that night with Mickey before they got caught. Before everything turned to shit, when he still believed in the world and their love and maybe their safety.

He tries not to think about that, just as he always tries not to think about it, as he starts walking too. Instead he goes home. Changes his clothes. Thinks about looking for new jobs but grabs a drink from the fridge instead and goes back to the dugouts.

It's daylight now, which is strange, but they've been here in daylight too. They were that time when he tried to make it all go back and had to wade through the swamp of reality to get there. When he tried to do pull-ups but couldn't, and wanted to shotgun but shouldn't, and craved fucking Mickey again, the way they used to do it, when Mickey could lean back and love it instead of spending fifteen minutes on his knees for no reward. Stupid fucking meds, Ian thinks, as he walks across the field to the spot of those days. And then he brings out his phone.

If you call up his voicemail, it gives you the last message, but only if you haven't listened to it. There's also the option of going back and listening to the old ones.

Ian should've deleted them. He's heard them all before, but now he listens to them again.

_Ian, what the fuck? You better come the fuck back home with the baby or I'll lose my fucking mind, okay? You didn't bring anything for him. No food, no diapers, no anything, Svetlana is going mad. If he fucking dies out there you know that she'll kill us both._

_Okay, it's fucking me again. I'm sorry for being mad at you. I'm not mad at you, okay? Come home and we'll figure it out. Yevgeny will be fine, I know he will, I know you'll keep him safe. You just need to come back and we'll figure out what to do._

_Just pick the fuck up, Ian, or fucking text me back at least. It's starting to turn dark._

_You must have stopped driving now. So what the fuck are you doing still not calling me back?_

_Okay, asshole, listen to me. If you need money, I'll send you money. I don't know how, but I will. Just don't fucking–_ Fuck _. Just don't do something stupid like the porno shit for it._

Ian hates that one the most out of all of them. Hates it because it reminds of what he used to do, and of how it would have broken Mickey's to know about it all. How it would break him to find out now, not just because Ian was cheating on him, but because Ian was letting people pay him to do it.

The thing is, it never felt good and it never felt fine, but most of the time he was able to ignore that part of it. To justify it, compartmentalize it away in a way that made him able to live with it and himself. But now, when he imagines it from Mickey's point of view, he can't stop seeing himself as a floppy-haired kid, sitting on the other side of the juvie-glass, so fucking innocent. So young, which he probably was, even when it was Kash.

That's another thing he doesn't think about now. Another thing he jerks away from as the voicemails go on. The other thing is the fact that Yevgeny could have died.

He doesn't like to think about that and so he tries not to, but it's true. In fact, so is everything his family said to him in the room with the military police. He's reckless. Dangerous. Just like his mom, who would put her kids in danger and leave them whenever she got tired of hanging around, the same way Ian's fucked off on caring for Yevgeny now. The same way he hasn't held the kid since he walked through those hospital doors, too scared that it's true that he's not good for him, and too fucking selfish to want to deal with it. Too adamantly turning away, and too aware that he could never touch a thing of Mickey's and still know how to let him go.

There are six more voicemails before the final one. The one which he's really doing this for.

 _Alright shithead, this is like the 200th time I’m calling you and you not picking up, and I’m starting to get fucking homicidal. Call me the fuck back, Ian. I’m worried about you. I_ love _you_.

Ian puts the phone down again.

This was all he wanted. To live a life with Mickey and love him and sleep in the same bed. To kiss him and be happy and to laugh with him. And instead, his own brain made it all come crashing down.

Who is this person he is now, he thinks? The one Mickey is talking to in these frantic, frenzied voicemails? This one who’s started always being on the run? Who looks at himself in the mirror before he turns around and cheats? And who is this person who kisses him now, in an alley, and lets him leave?

 _Compared to how he used to be?_ he remembers Debbie saying. _He's different._ And Ian doesn't think he likes the thing that's left.

*

Later – much later – he will think back on this whole thing as another rock bottom in a long string of them.

Really, he's just flailing. He walks around, looking for a new job because apparently a new trait of his is stubbornness in the face of people just trying to give a shit, which means he doesn't go back to the diner. For a moment he considers the club instead, but he quickly lets that go, too scared of what he would learn about himself if he went back in his lithium-sober state. Fuck, he even considers begging Linda for his old job back, but then he thinks he would probably have to walk out the moment he went inside the fridge again.

In the end, Lip helps him out. Apparently, the sanitary department at the fucking university are always looking for another helping hand. So that’s how he ends up with a _Dav_ on his chest and a trash-can in his hand as he walks through campus.

He pretty much fucking hates it.

It’s one thing to clean things up – he did that at the Kash and Grab too, although in a less organized way – but it’s a different one to be doing it in a place where everyone else is walking around on trust-fund money, realizing their dreams.

Ian kind of hates them all, but that's not really new. Honestly, he even kind of hates Lip, who didn't even try to get into university but had it handed to him on a platter anyway. Who's never lost a dream, just gained more than he bargained for, and who's walking around with his college friends talking about shit that Ian doesn't understand.

He wants to go back to what they were. Two brothers on the same page, running away from security guards after stealing Lip's robot shit, breeze in their hair making him feel free. Two boys in the van smoking, laughing about stupid shit. Two kids sleeping in the same room, used to the sound of each other's breaths.

Instead they get in a fight too. A physical one, Ian still stronger than him, although that's not much satisfaction. And while Lip is on the floor with his bloodied nose, he looks up at him.

"You don't have to be like her, you know?" he says. "You don't have to be a piece of shit just because Monica is."

Ian stops to look at him. Really look, at his brother with the messy hair who he used to share a bed with, then a room. Who he knows better than anyone, maybe even Mickey. Who's been his rock as much as the guy whose shadow he's strained against, and who hates his mom just like the rest of their family does.

 _Too late_ , he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud. Instead he turns around on his heel and walks out.

He doesn't go home. He never does these days. Instead he walks around in the shield of the dark in his stupid uniform with the stars lighting his way, glinting breaks in the darkness that he can't seem to find down here. Instead he reaches the bridge where he stands and looks at the water, velvet black and deep. So quiet in a way he longs for. So violent and calm.

The wind hits his face. He doesn’t really consider it, not actually, but he still has the thought. Blood on linoleum, Thanksgiving. Water that breaks against the shore.

He closes his eyes to imagine it. And when he opens them again, two cars run together and crash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uuh sorry asdfgh. i did say we would hit rock bottom. how are we feeling and what are we thinking? please let me know in the comments, as always it's wonderful to hear from you. or tell me on [tumblr](himick.tumblr.com). also i swear i don't hate lip and fiona, ian is just very upset at everyone right now asdfjg
> 
> also i know this is sad but can you guess from the context and your knowledge of s6 what comes next? i'm talking something about a blue uniform (and we still don't know who caleb is)..... are we excited for that?


	4. 4 – Mickey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ladies… we are getting out of rock bottom. and i seem to be smelling cookies?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, welcome back! this is later than intended but unfortunately for this fic i suddenly had a real life to attend. had a great week though, so all in all a good thing. hope you all are excited for this though! enjoy your reading!

In the few days after they fuck in the back alley of Patsy's, they don't talk.

That's not entirely new. It's certainly not the first time the two of them have fucked without talking about it, or fucked in moments where maybe talking is what they should have done instead. Mickey remembers the wedding, for one. All their first times. But it's stranger now, after everything, and when he doesn't seek Ian out in the days afterwards, it's because he doesn't really know what to do with it.

Ian is setting fire to his life, that much is certain. Not just the part that Mickey's in, but the rest of it too, yelling at Fiona who Mickey knows he's always loved. Quitting his job on a whim, when Mickey is pretty sure he hasn't spent more than a couple of weeks out of work since he was fourteen. 

He worries about him, of course. But right now it seems like the right thing to do is to let him be, so he does.

Two things happen while they don't speak. Firstly, Iggy comes home.

Mickey is on the couch when it happens; key turning in the lock. For a moment he hopes it's Ian, fears it's somehow his dad, and is worried that it's Mandy needing some kind of help. Then Iggy's stupid mug comes into view and he feels himself relax.

"The fuck you been?" he says, while Iggy is shrugging off his coat. Not that it's that unusual to be gone for weeks in this house, and not that Iggy's really been completely absent. They've never been the type of brothers to visit each other in the joint, too aware that the back and forth would take up their whole lives and too used to the going and coming back another time, picking up where they left off, so they haven't seen each other since Ian was off with his mom. They've talked on the phone though, when Mickey thought he still needed to make bail, and anyway, it's not like leaving isn't something he's done too. Iggy just smiles.

"With a chick, man. Big mansion, husband away on a business trip. And look–"

He brings out his bag and dumps the contents out on the couch. Electronics, jewelry, pills. Mickey grins.

"What, you finally decided to pull your weight around here?"

Iggy flips him off.

"Consider it payback for all the tits I saw while you were a pimp."

"Shut the fuck up," Mickey says. He sorts through the shit though, thinking there might be a full grand in there if they go to the right places. Behind him, Iggy takes out two beers from the fridge and brings him one.

"You still got the pigs on you?"

"Nah. Had nothing on me, and for once the attorney gave a shit. We can move this stuff tomorrow."

"Fucking A."

And just like that, there's life back in the nightmare house again.

The second thing that happens, is that the Gallaghers get a notice on their door to evict.

*

He hears it the evening it happens because he's at the Alibi.

It's been a while since he went here to drink, the way he did while Ian was off in the army and he was newly married with the kid on his way. Back then he'd so desperately needed these moments of escape, from Svetlana and the imminent baby but also from his dad and the whole sorry mess of his life, pressing down on him like a hand over his mouth. 

These days it's not the same.

Well. He's still here because of Svetlana and the kid, but now it's because this is apparently the woman's new job, and because if Mickey knows her to be anything, it's able to get her way.

To be honest though, he thinks her power over him is waning, and that if he really wanted to, he could protest more. But if Ian ever actually does come back to him, it probably won't be a great look to have burned all the bridges with the kid that Ian loves.

Anyway, it means he's here, handing the kid back over when Vee comes in, frantic and ready to share the news. Eviction notice taped to their door, bright and angry yellow, warning three days. Although they're not currently speaking, Mickey still feels it. Bone-deep exhaustion that comes with the worry returning again. And when Vee has gone, Svetlana turns to look at him.

"You will wrinkle fast when old," she says. 

"What?"

She points to his face.

"Frown everyday. You are worrier."

"Alright, whatever," he says. "Why don't you stick to your own shit, and I'll stick to mine?"

There's no real venom in it, though. She's right, anyway. He's just not a fan of having it pointed out to him that no matter how hard he tries to hide it, you can always see this shit on his face.

Svetlana doesn't reply, but she keeps wiping down on the glasses she's working on cleaning, wearing this expression like she sees right through him. She probably does. After all, they lived together for a while.

"Can I go anyway?"

"Yevgeny will need shoes soon," she says. 

"He's not even standing yet."

"Two months."

"Alright, whatever. I'll get him shoes. Get him a fucking jacket and sweater too, some stupid little socks. Happy?" She nods. "Jesus. It's like pulling out teeth."

"Pulling out teeth is easy," she says. "You can do it with thread."

For a moment he's not sure if she's being serious. But then he sees that the corners of her lips are upturned.

"Very funny," he says, but it actually kind of is, in a way that reminds him that there are parts of them that are somewhat similar. The shitty dads and the shitty life and this tendency they have to prioritize their own. And maybe also their general shit-talking at the world, the way he's really seen her pick up while standing behind the bar. Now she smiles for real.

"You see? You are nice, you get joke."

"Uh-huh? Lucky me," he says. But he doesn't ask what happens if he's not nice, and he doesn't even feel like that's what she's really saying, because maybe it is true: Their amicability these days is more about the residue peace they entered into while Ian was around, than about him feeling like he couldn't fight her enough to walk away. More about waiting around for Ian to get his head on straight.

Not that he has to wait that long. In the morning, Ian knocks on his door.

*

It's a little surprising to see him there, but also a little not.

It's been like this since their start, really. Something collapses and Ian comes to him, the way he did that first time Monica came back, because he said he needed to see him. The way he did that summer when he was tense about Westpoint and always fighting with Lip. That time when he was in the boy's home, sneaking out to see him.

For a while, it's been different, of course. This last year he's developed a habit of turning away, leaving Mickey one step behind. At the club, wanting Ian to talk. At the house, wanting Ian to talk. On the phone. At the hospital. In Ian's front yard.

But today he's there again. Big eyes, still pale, the way he's been for a while now, like the sickness has crawled from his brain and out to coat his freckled skin. Red hair shining in the gleam of the sun, him looking into Mickey's eyes with something sorry on his face.

"Hi," he says.

They haven't talked since the fucking. Mickey said that already, but he also said it was normal; he's not sure this is. Not this look on Ian's face, which looks tired and sad and so filled with remorse.

Of course Mickey forgives him. It's hardly a thought at all. So he tilts his head.

"Hey."

To be honest, the two of them have never needed apologies. They fight (he fights). They hurt each other (he hurts Ian). They come back and look at each other again. Forgive it. (Or Ian forgives him. Doesn't push him to take back the lies about how he doesn't matter to him. Moves on and asks him to kiss him instead).

Today Mickey opens the door.

"Coffee?" he asks, and Ian nods. 

"Yeah."

*

They sit at the dining table. Or Ian sits there anyway, leaned back in his chair while Mickey stands at the kitchen counter, fixing the coffee for them. They haven't moved the stuff yet – Iggy's still asleep – and instead it's on the table, where Ian fiddles a little with it.

It's strange how normal it is for him to be in the house again, hair aflame and beautiful. At this table where they used to eat their food every day, which maybe is why. Or maybe it's just that he still looks at home.

"Let me guess," he says, when Mickey puts down a cup in front of him. "Iggy's work?"

"From some rich chick."

"Of course," Ian says. It's amused, this mixture of fond exasperation which reminds Mickey of how Ian lived in this house with them. Not just their triangle shit with Svetlana, but also the Milkoviches, who he knows about as well as Mickey knows the Gallaghers. They were that intertwined.

"He's here?"

"Still sleeping in his bedroom."

"Hm."

Ian fiddles a little with his cup, and Mickey looks at him.

To be honest, he looks more alive. Maybe still pale but with something fresh in his eyes, which is strange because you'd assume that an eviction notice would freak him out. But maybe it's easier for him to focus on a problem that's not himself, or maybe it's something else. Perhaps to do with this plate he's for some reason brought.

"What's up with the house?" Mickey asks, instead of asking about that. Ian sighs.

"Fuck, I don't know. It's Patrick again. Basically he hates us for screwing him over that time we paid you and Iggy to beat him up. He's putting the house on auction now to smoke us out, thinks he'll get temporarily loaded from selling it."

"Could beat him up again?" Mickey says. "Make sure his wife's not there this time?"

Ian snorts, amused.

"As much as I also want to bash his head in, I don't think that'll work. The house is going to auction whether he's got a broken leg or not."

"Could be revenge?"

"Because that went great with Sammi."

"Fuck you, man," Mickey says. He doesn't really mean it though, and he doesn't think Ian does either. They're both smiling a little anyway, and Mickey shrugs. "Maybe not a perfect plan."

"You think?"

He flips Ian off, but Ian just smiles. 

Really, it's so easy, falling back into this stuff. Easy to forget that two weeks ago, Ian was pissed at him about the whole thing, almost getting himself locked up, which maybe Mickey can admit was not the smartest move. Easy to forget all the other stuff; the way that Ian sent Fiona to help instead of coming himself, or didn't want to be there picking him up, and the way that that hurt. Because on the other hand, there's this: How easy it is to smile with him. To just let everything else go and look at him and feel good.

If anything tells Mickey that this is worth fighting for, then it's that. All the things that Ian did for him of course, throwing him softballs until he learned how to swing, but also just this ease they always fall into. That they always have, whenever they've been apart or have fought before, after juvie and after juvie again and after the wedding, which he tries not to think of now. After Mickey called him a warm mouth and Ian forgave, or after beating each other up at the dugouts, and then finding togetherness after the release. 

Mickey's really missed him. That's what he thinks of now as Ian sits and looks at him.

"I'm glad you're not locked up, you know," Ian says.

"Really? Thanks, asshole."

"You know what I mean. If I'd been feeling better... Fuck, I don't know, it just pisses me off. They keep trying to pull shit on you with no evidence just because you're a Milkovich."

"You're just learning that now?"

"No, but it's still not fair."

Mickey smiles a little bit, trying to school it into something not too big and not sure he's succeeding. He's not that mad about it, too used to the cops' shit, but he is happy about this; the glimpse of the old Ian who cared when things were unfair, and who tried to fight for Mickey to have a better life. _You could read_ , but also _you're just gonna let him ruin your life?_

"I'm sorry I didn't come see you," Ian says then. And he's looking so sincere that Mickey understands. 

In some ways, he thinks, they're quite similar. Or maybe it's just that Ian is like him now, sitting here and talking like he knows he's brought Mickey pain, the truth of that something Mickey's felt before too and remembers like a lump in his throat. Like his knuckles, bruised from Ian's skin and then a little later, bruised from the mirror where it shattered across his own reflection. 

"Alright," he says.

"And for the sex."

That's a joke, Mickey can tell. He smiles, slow, and then Ian joins, and maybe it's all alright.

"Yeah? You don't usually apologize for that shit."

"Well, it's a special circumstance."

"It's fine, Orphan Annie. It's not like I've always been nice to you."

Ian shrugs.

"Yeah, well."

It's different when you're the one who does it. Mickey knows that. Different when you have to look at the blood on your own hands.

That's another reason why Mickey thinks he understands him, even now. The things he remembers doing to hurt Ian too. Standing at the Kash and Grab, trying to convince him he doesn't love him back. The gravel and the blood from his fist. The way he was so _scared_ , out of his mind with it all the time, and the way he knows what it's like to lash out trying to protect yourself.

Sometimes he wonders if he did it wrong, or if they both did. If maybe there's too much hurt between them already. But Ian has made him the kind of person who dares to say that he wants it to be and won't give up. So he looks at Ian's plate again.

"What the fuck's up with this anyway?" he asks. To change the topic and get them onto safe lands, which works. At least Ian smiles.

"I baked cookies," he says.

"You a girl scout now?"

"For the firemen."

"Of course, because now it makes perfect sense."

Ian grins again.

"No, well, I was kind of in an accident," he says. "Or not in, the witness of."

That last part comes a little too late for Mickey's liking and heart-rate, he'd like to say.

"Pulled this woman out of her burning car before it exploded behind us. Got kind of smoked up."

"What the fuck, Ian?"

"It was fine. They gave me oxygen, and I went back home."

Mickey just shakes his head. Honestly, if he's learned anything over this last year, it's that Ian has some stupid fucking ideas sometimes. Most of it might have been mania, he doesn't really know, but no matter what it was – learning Russian or wanting to go to some military stranger's funeral – Mickey learned that Ian is often way too stubborn to be talked down. So if he wants the firemen to have cookies, then shit – they're getting cookies.

"Okay, whatever," he says. "So you played Martha Stewart for them?" 

"Buddy Valastro, actually."

Mickey gives him a look to tell him he's not funny, but Ian just grins.

"Brought the cookies there. Was apparently saved by a guy on the gay squad. Got inspired."

"What, to add a new search to your porn history?"

Ian gives him a look back, but Mickey can tell he's amused.

"Job-wise," he says. 

"You wanna run into fires now, tough guy?"

He shrugs.

"EMT."

The way he says it tells Mickey everything. There it is, the looking down, which coupled with the shrug tells the story well enough. He's nervous about this. He never used to be, always knowing how to go after shit, but fuck – if you're eighteen and your whole world's been tugged out from under your feet, it probably makes sense for you to be a little unsure. 

But it fits. Fuck, it fits, perfect for this guy who used to live and breathe determination and who's always had a bleeding heart. Who needs a plan and who looks so much more alive now that he has it. In fact, it fits way better than going off to some far-away country to get his dick shot off, if Mickey has a say. So he grins.

"Yeah?" he says. "But you need training for that?"

"Could sign up. Malcolm X."

"Vocational training, huh?"

He thinks they both remember. Him just out of juvie, the heat still hanging heavy in the air. Lukewarm beer and a smoke, Ian bringing it to his lips with the hand he just used on Mickey's neck to guide him down. Fuck that had been a good night, the first time Mickey had gotten a taste of the confident, buzzcut guy that the fire-haired sweet boy on the other side of the juvie-glass had turned into. And now Ian smiles.

"It's that or being fucked for life, right?"

"Fuck you, man, I'm doing okay." But they're both still smiling together. "The blue's gonna suit your hair."

These things always spill out of him without hesitation, which maybe is because they're just plain and simple truth.

"I guess," Ian says. But he's still smiling, still a little shy, and Mickey remembers how he's still just a teen. How, for at least a couple more months, they both are.

"And the house?" he says.

"We'll try to buy it back at the auction. Fiona might get a loan. You should come, if you want to."

He nods.

"'Course," he says. Really, it's not a question. If there's anything Milkoviches know how to do, it's show up. 

"Okay," Ian says. And as he smiles again, Mickey thinks that things are looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow we're ending things on a good note? unprecedented! perhaps i said they've always been friends as well as lovers with my whole damn chest
> 
> how are we feeling about it all? about ian choosing to come to mickey? please clap in the comments and tell me you like 'em sweet, or come say hi on [tumblr](https://himick.tumblr.com). i always enjoy hearing from you!


	5. 5 – Ian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the gallaghers lose the house, but ian and mickey have a conversation about some important things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again i am telling you welcome back! hope you had a great weekend and that you're ready to get deep into ian's mind again. enjoy your reading!

He has to deal with the eviction notice too now.

They have three days. Fiona is already using them to run around with Sean, trying to get approved for the loan to buy the house, and trying to get the money from the down payment. Ian kind of wishes she would just take what Carl is offering, especially since she's been taking Lip's scam money for years. But whatever. He'll admit that that opinion might be slightly born from these days' general fighting with her.

That's part of what's going on. The other parts, which are more his own, are stranger to deal with.

The accident first. It happened, and then suddenly there he was, pulling that woman out of her car before he even thought of it. Getting fucking smoked up, pretty much passing out, but getting well and getting home and waking up in his bed the next morning with a plan. Making cookies - maybe a little nuts. Bringing them by to the gay shift. Going to Mickey's house.

When he thinks of it now, it felt a bit like coming out of a fog. Not just this shitty feeling that he's almost gotten used to, a mixture of guilt and grief and trauma and remembering being sick. Not just that, but this new, old thing of being almost back to what they were before. To those summers while they were working at the Kash and Grab and laughing and Ian felt fond of every stupid thing that Mickey did. To those last moments of Mickey huffing and puffing when Ian tried to touch him, while failing so deeply to hide his smile that Ian couldn't miss the truth.

He's been thinking about that since. About sitting in Mickey's living room and telling him he's sorry and having Mickey nod like forgiveness is not a big deal. Maybe it isn't, to him. Maybe that's the L-word thing, which Ian tries not to think of.

But he thinks of this: Malcolm X. One semester, ten weeks, an exam at the end and there you go.

He wants to. He hasn't done it yet. But he wants to and maybe he will.

Before that, he kind of has to deal with the rest of the shit though, which is strange. Strange to be banded together with his siblings again, who he kind of hasn't shared a team with lately. Who maybe he's been taking it all out on a little bit. Who he now has to stand together with again.

Maybe that's why, one afternoon, Lip comes into his room.

They haven't really talked just the two of them since what happened at the dorms. He's been home before, sure, but it's easy to avoid each other in the house these days, at least if you really want to. But now he comes in to sit at the foot of Ian's bed.

"I like what you've done with the place," he says. The screen-door room he means, that belonged to Fiona and then Lip and now belongs to him.

"Nothing, you mean?"

"Yeah."

They look at each other. A moment passes, another, until it's been a few. Then they both crack a smile.

They've fought before; it's not new. Usually it ends like this, with unspoken reconciliation, and Ian thinks about how the same thing happened with Mickey yesterday too. Maybe that means it matters. Maybe that means it's secure. Maybe that just means that people are often kind to him.

Now Lip is looking at him like they've never not been okay.

"Going with Helene to a conference," he says. Ian snorts.

"Right. You a kept boy now or what?"

"Hey, it's not so easy getting gifts when you're a straight guy who isn't into perverts. Really, you should be proud."

"Uh-huh," Ian says, but he's smiling, ignoring the part of that that feels bad to hear. "When is it?"

"The entire weekend."

"Wow. And you're just gonna follow her around like a puppy on a leash the entire time?"

"Bingo," Lip says, and now they're smiling together.

Ian has really missed him. That's not something him and Lip ever really say to each other, but he knows that it's something they've both felt before. This time though, it feels like it's been so long since they were last this close.

When they were kids, they talked about everything. They talked about Frank and they talked about school and fuck, they even talked about girls for a while, before Ian's whole secret about that was revealed. Then Ian started realizing where his gaze really fell, and Ian started working at the Kash and Grab, and well...

Maybe it should have told him something about the situation, that he knew Lip would freak out if he ever found which yeah, Lip did. _He's married, he's old, he's your boss_. Ian was so pissed at Lip for saying it like that back then, but now the real truth of it is another thing he tries to escape.

Anyway, that wasn't the last time, but just the time it began. Ian never stopped keeping secrets, and then he turned sick and it got even worse. Then all they ever talked about was Ian being nuts. But now Lip is sitting there on his striped duvet, smiling at him, and Ian thinks that yeah: they've been fighting before. But maybe Lip is also a kind of life partner to him.

That's why he brings it up, he thinks. Looks at his hands as he says it.

"I’ve been talking to Mickey again."

It probably shouldn't be surprising by now, that Lip reacts with a smile. A pleased one, which makes it almost amusing to imagine what old Lip would say if he saw himself now.

"Yeah?" he says. Similar tone. "He hold a gun to your head?"

"No, I went there myself. After the fire station."

"And?"

"We talked a little."

"You didn't fuck?"

Ian gives him a look.

"No," he says, although he has to admit that playing offended is a little rich. Maybe they didn't yesterday, but they did the last time they saw each other before that. Another secret, which Ian has kept from anyone else. Lip just shrugs.

"Thought that was your MO, that's all." Ian kicks at him once, and Lip smiles. "But really. He would have done it."

"What?"

"Held a gun to your head to keep you safe."

"You on his side?"

Lip shrugs.

"Just saying," he says.

He's right, of course. Ian knew already, and he knows it even more now, having watched Mickey standing by and waiting while Ian's been fucking up. In some ways, it's kind of sweet; Mickey this guy who's always known how to solve things with fists, and who's been grasping so hard for something to do with his hands to help Ian too. Like taking care of the meds or taking care of the food or holding Ian on the tiny bed, tender a word for careful touches and the remnants of a bruise. But it's also been fucking hard, and that's why Ian shrugs.

"Yeah," he says. "Kind of annoying when you want to let it all burn."

"Is that why you did it? Broke up with him?"

"I don't really know."

That's not true, of course. He knows it well enough, he just doesn't know how to say it. That he wanted it all to be over. Everything that happened, and everything he did. Everything since that day on that fucking couch which he sees in glimpses sometimes, and always looks away from, like not letting the image fully load will save him from it. Everything after that, the heartbreak and the army and the mania and the cheating and the hospital and Yevgeny and Mickey's broken heart.

He wanted to cut it out of his life. To pretend it didn't happen, to move on from it. He wanted to save Mickey from having to deal with it, and he wanted to protect his own heart from the way he knew it would shatter if Mickey eventually decided he was too much and left. He wanted not to feel like he was something to be fixed.

He thought he could do it too. Master compartmentalizer as he's been since Kash, he thought he had the skills for it. But Mickey has turned out to be something he can't manage to hit the reset button on.

Lip is still watching him, so he shrugs.

"I just didn't know what else to do," he says. An understatement of the century, but Lip nods. Tilts his head. 

"And yet?" he says. And that's true too.

"Yeah," he says. "And yet."

*

It's true what Ian said: he's fought with Lip countless times before. Since they were kids really, so close in age and so different from each other that they've regularly spent time at each other's throats, and the time in-between that sharing everything. It's usual business for them. 

With Fiona it's a different thing.

Really, it's his fault. Ian knows that, the same way he knows that he's to blame for most stupid conflicts in his life these days. His fault, because he's angry at everything, and because he doesn't feel alive, and because he hasn't known how to deal with anything. But there's a plan now, laid out in front of him, and since he's talked to Mickey there's less of the constantly nagging guilt. 

That's why he does it, he thinks. Makes the two cups of tea on the day of the auction and brings them up to Fiona's room. Knocks on the edge of the doorframe, and waits for her call before he shoulders his way in.

She sits up in the bed when she sees that it's him. She's in one of the t-shirts she normally sleeps in, but although it's gone midnight, he's certain she hasn't even tried to close her eyes yet. Probably won't really manage the whole night if he knows her right, which he thinks he does. Even if she's hopeful now, the nerves will still exist. So he holds up the cups.

"Thought this might help you relax," he says, and hands her one of them. It doesn't pass him by that he's repeating what Lip did for him the other day, but maybe that's family. Learning from each other. Either way she sits up to take the cup.

"Thanks."

He looks at her a little, silent throughout it. To be honest he feels bad about the way he's treated her, even as he still feels pissed about the way she's treated him; comparing him to Monica and acting like he can't do anything himself. But she's worried, that's it. He knows that. And she's gripping onto to the last tethers of control, while everything and everyone in their family seem to be falling apart.

He gets it, he thinks. He knows what it's like to try to turn back the clock. And anyway, he's always related to her; the two of them as the steady-working, responsible Gallaghers, who had dreams and plans and hopes. Who's failed at them now and lost their way, and maybe that's where the issue is.

She smiles at him then. He smiles at her.

"I'm sorry, Fiona," he says. And just like with Lip, that's all it really takes for her to put her cup on her bedside-table and open up her arm.

While she hugs him, he remembers. The police station first, Lip's hug and Debbie's and then Mickey's, most of all. That hospital room after, Fiona running up to him and holding him in her arms.

He'd wanted to cry then, in the way he imagines people with real parents want to do when their life is in shambles and they just need an adult. He'd wanted to sit down and not get up, and he'd wanted to be a child again, this memory of being six and having a harmless flu and of Monica making him soup. He'd wanted to ask Mickey to take him back home.

Now he watches Fiona wipe a single tear from eye as she leans away. She's always been like that. A moment of breaking apart, then back up again.

"I love you, you know," she says. And he does.

"I love you too."

"You think we'll get the house?"

He doesn't. Not really, because it's been a while since things stopped working out for him. Maybe since that day that he always tries to forget. But Fiona needs the hope, just like she needed it when she believed in other things. Jimmy. That she could manage a club. That Monica wouldn't fuck them over this time. So he nods.

"Sure," he says. But he's not surprised when they don't.

*

Mickey is there when it happens. He said he'd be, so of course he is, and he's there later too, for the pretty dejected Gallagher house dinner. And then he’s on the porch, the two of them sharing a smoke.

It's been a weird day. At first they had the anticipation, then the nerves. The fear as the numbers climbed higher, the bombshell drop when it got too high. Fiona's look of horror, and Ian's hand to her shoulder which probably didn't really help. 

She's upstairs now, with Sean. Trying to work out a new plan, which is what Gallaghers have always done. Just taken the hits and gotten back up, which feels very different from the floundering that Ian is doing right now. If he knew how to help, he would, but he's still low on energy and maybe he's still used to Fiona magically managing to fix things.

They have to move out by the end of the week. That's four days, which is generous and hopeless at the same time. 

In the midst of that, there's Mickey though. Mickey, who's sitting by his side now, having a drag on the cigarette.

"It probably has mold anyway," he says. He's trying to lighten the mood for sure, and if Ian wasn't feeling so weird, he might be feeling grateful to still have him on his team. It reminds him of other times, anyway. Fiona being gone all night and Mickey listening to him talk. The two of them trying to get Mandy to leave that fist-happy fuck.

"It definitely has mold," he says, because it definitely does. Probably has rats too. Termites, asbestos. Mickey hands the cigarette back over to him.

"You can stay with me," he says. "If it comes to that."

"Me?"

"Seeing as I wouldn't just leave a kid on the street, I’m thinking the lot of you."

Ian smiles.

"Really?" he says. "A Gallagher infestation?"

"Frank not included."

"Fuck no."

Mickey smiles back. Ian hands the cigarette over again.

Mickey's so nice to him, and it's difficult for him to know what to do with that.

Here he is, this guy who's probably better than anyone knows. Who's gentle with Ian, and kind in a way he hasn't been taught by anyone; certainly not his evil, psychotic prick of a dad. Who's been good to Ian throughout all this, which at first made Ian scared it meant he'd become the object of everyone's pity, even to Mickey who used to treat him like he knew he wouldn't break. Who he used to have fun with. Who would tell him to go fuck himself and never actually mean what it said on the tin, and who would do all that while knowing that Ian saw it for what it was.

To lose that felt like losing him, or losing who he used to be, but then Ian remembered. This other day, Monica back and Ian's feet on the pavement, Terry behind the door and Mickey knowing what time he worked.

Maybe it wasn't just that Ian was losing himself. Maybe it was also that Mickey didn't have to be scared anymore.

There are other things Ian thinks of too. Mickey's hands and how it says fuck-u-up on them, but he touches Ian so gently like he might go up in smoke. Mickey's stupid t-shirts that he cuts the sleeves off himself, like the one he's wearing now. The way that, when it matters, he puts on a button-up instead.

He's missed him. Maybe that's what that means. He's missed Mickey and his teasing words and his happy grin and the smell of him. The questions he always asks, like this:

"Where's Debbie?" he says, around the smoke. 

"Out somewhere with Frank. Trying to officially separate from the family, I think."

"Why?"

"Fiona threatened to kick her out."

"Because of the baby?" Ian nods. "So all is well in the nut-house, huh?"

Ian snorts. Mickey is right. On the days where he's able to take a step out of his own world and look at it from above, it does seem pretty nuts. Debbie's fifteen and pregnant, Carl is fresh out of juvie, Lip is probably drinking too much and Ian, well – Ian is circling the drain, out of his fucking mind.

"You okay?" Mickey asks. Ian shrugs, then sighs.

"Sucks," he says.

"Yeah."

"Can't really feel it all, since I'm taking the stupid meds."

Mickey frowns at that.

"Shouldn't they have leveled out by now?"

"Yeah, if I'd been consistent with them."

That's a halfway provocation, but mostly it's just a quiet admittance of the realities of his life. Mickey looks at him, raised brows.

"Right," he says. "And you're aware that that's a dumbass fucking move?"

"It's not that easy, Mick. Would you like it, if you had to spend thirty to forty years taking pills to be yourself?" And then he sighs. "Fuck, I'm not even sure if this is myself."

"Who else would it be?"

Ian shrugs. He doesn't really know. All he knows is that he still has those feelings from before, the lack of recognition when he looks at himself. The worry that he doesn't know who he is now, and the fear that someday it'll all be back again.

Mickey looks at him though. Mickey sits in the breeze and the cigarette-smoke and shrugs.

"You're still you," he says. "You were sick, you're getting back. You've got a plan and everything, the EMT shit."

"You really think this is the same guy you started fucking years ago?"

"Okay, so you're still in the thick of it."

"It's a cyclical disease, Mick."

Maybe that's the worst part. That it doesn't stop here, once he's made his way out of drowning waters. That the manic guy who did all the shit they're both still dealing with now will be back, like the devil woken up again. That Ian can't trust what he'll do. Just know that he could show any minute, without him really knowing, ready to pull the pin out of another fucking grenade. 

Sometimes it feels like it was all someone else, mania taking over like an alien from the inside. And sometimes it feels like maybe it was all just him, a little to the left. Like maybe it's been inside all this time; this ugly, terrible shit. Like maybe that's why he's still being a dick to Mickey sometimes, and maybe that's why he hasn't even asked about the kid.

Mickey's not bothered though, which might be one of the things that's made him able to stick this out. Instead he gives Ian a look.

"Okay man, whatever. Be hopeless about it then. All I'm trying to say is that I think you'll be okay."

That kind of shuts Ian up. Makes him smile a little, especially because Mickey just says it like it's true, the way he says a lot of things. _What you and I have makes me free._ Because after he's said it, he wipes his palm over his face, the way he always does when he's trying to contain what he feels.

Ian has seen it before. In fact, he's seen it enough to have uncovered this truth of Mickey, which he kind of already knew: That Mickey's the very opposite of the emotionless guy he used to try to pretend to be. That in fact, he has so many that are so ocean-deep he could probably use them to drown.

Ian wants to believe him. He really, really does, and he wants more than that. Wants to be able to tell him that he thinks it'll all be okay too, and that Ian will find his way back to something from before, the buzzcut kid on the couch with the smile. The one that knew how to offer Mickey hope. And love.

He doesn't feel like that guy anymore, but he does still love him. So he takes the cigarette from him and reaches out to rest his free palm to the back of Mickey's head. To dip his nails into his hair and dig through it. 

"Okay," he says. "Maybe I will."

And Mickey smiles a little too.

"Thank you for coming today."

"Yeah. No problem, asshole."

Ian smiles back. Smiles, because Mickey is so many things and this is one of them. Tough and grumpy and ruthless, but kind.

He stays the night of course. It was implied that he would, probably from the moment that Ian asked him to come, because it's how they've always slotted together again. When Ian returned from the army, and Mickey came to see him; then didn't ever leave.

Tonight he's on the floor like he was back then, which is probably more pretense than it is anything. They go through with it anyway, Ian pulling the extra mattress into the room and sitting on the edge of the bed, handing Mickey one of the pillows, the two of them smiling a little. Then the lights are out and he's looking up, the room quiet enough that he can hear Mickey's breaths.

He misses him. Misses him in the way he misses the past, romanticized notion of something that was better than this. And he misses him for who he is. A guy who flips him off to tease, or beats someone up out of jealousy, or stands at a Northside afterparty and says he just wants beer. Who shit-talks everybody and is still so nice to him, even in the beginning when concern was something he fought so hard to not show and failed. Who's always made him laugh. Who is so himself in a way that Ian, always morphing to other people's desires of him, is not.

He could say that out loud and maybe he should, but he doesn't. Instead he listens to Mickey's breaths pause before he speaks.

"I didn't mean to do it wrong, you know," he says. Quiet, as if this isn't a new thought. "Make you feel like you're not the same or I don't love you anymore or whatever. What you said."

_You used to love me. Now you don't even know who I am._

"I never wanted to fix you. I just wanted you to be okay." 

Ian closes his eyes.

He thinks maybe this whole thing has really broken his heart. That it broke when Mickey got married and was mended a little again, but fragile enough to shatter that day Mickey looked at him and said he needed help. Not because what Mickey said was wrong, but because he didn't want any of it to be happening to them. Because the only example he had was his mom, and everyone hates her, and because he couldn't bear to think that that would happen to them.

Maybe that's part of why he's been trying to run away; this loss that he's so fucking terrified of. This idea that one day Mickey will get enough of him and pack his shit and leave, and that Ian will have driven him to it by constantly changing size. That Mickey's heart in his hands will stain them with blood.

But Mickey's saying the opposite. Mickey's saying he's fine and that he'll probably be okay and that things will work out. Mickey's being kind, and Ian's remembering; this feeling he had at the hospital, that the only one he trusted to make the call for him was Mickey. Because Mickey's the only one who sees him. Not his mom, and not the past, but just who he really is.

He didn't do anything wrong. Instead, Mickey is the only one who's ever tried to love him right.

"I know, Mick," he says. "I don't mean that stuff anymore."

There's quiet for a moment. And when Mickey speaks, there's a smile in his voice.

"Okay."

They don't talk more before they sleep that night. Instead Ian lies there and listens to Mickey's breaths slowly starting to even out and turn deep, until finally he's asleep. Then he leans over the edge of the bed and looks at him.

He's calm like this. Beautiful. And as Ian watches him, he gets this sudden feeling that he wishes the rain would come and rinse everything clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i gotta tell you i personally quite enjoy this chapter asdfgh. what could be better than getting to write sweet ian thinking of mickey with a lot of love? not much, in my humble opinion 
> 
> i hope you enjoyed too? tell me in the comments please, i love it when we talk. or – because i apparently refuse to not plug my tumblr all the time – tell me on tumblr [here](https://himick.tumblr.com)


	6. 6 - Mickey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which mickey thinks about ian talking (you’ll understand)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) me: i’ll post about twice a week. also me: does not do that. the reason this time is that i’m about to have some friends visiting for some days and that i thought you’d rather have two one-week-ish waits than one three-day-wait and one two-week-wait. anyway all that to say that the next one will also have about a week’s wait (or a lil more)  
> 2) yes we did add two chapters to this  
> 3) i’m fond of this chapter too so i hope you enjoy!

For the first time in a while, he wakes up with Ian by his side.

They're not in the same bed, but they're in the same room. Not the one where they used to sleep with Carl and Liam too, and where Mickey has slept on the floor before, but in the room with the pocket-door where Mickey thinks Mandy probably slept with Lip once.

It's early when he wakes, dawn still only about to break through the window. Outside he can hear the sound of a couple of birds, but in here it's quiet, just Ian's slow breaths which tells Mickey he's still asleep. He can't see his face from here, but he can see his hand, hanging over the edge of the bed in Mickey's direction.

Yesterday they lost the house. Mickey wasn't surprised, too used to things never going his way, but Ian wasn't either, and that felt a little strange. Mickey remembers him anyway, this kid who had dreams and hope in their chance of coming true. Who had faith in things, like his family fixing the DCFS situation or the two of them being able to solve it all with love.

In the beginning, Mickey thought that made him so naive. Now he thinks maybe it's a privilege to have hope.

He turns around on the mattress, sitting up in the process. It means he's next to Ian's face, able to watch it now, illuminated in the soft gray of dawn which gets rid of some of his new starkness.

He's on his side, and now Mickey sees that the arm that's stretched out is also stretched over his duvet, bunched up, the frame of it making it look as if he's holding onto something. His face is relaxed, and his chest rises and falls in a quiet rhythm. It makes a little noise as the air enters and leaves his nose, not quite a snore but a musical piece which Mickey has fallen asleep to before.

Mickey smiles at him. And although they're not together, he touches his palm to Ian's hair and feels the way it spreads through his chest to his fingers; all the love.

He's not quite sure what else to feel.

Happy, because Ian asked him to stay in this room, in a way that suggests that the breakup is not really fully on.

Worried, because there's a part of Ian that's right when he worries about who he is now. Not because he's wrong, or because the meds change him, or don't change him, or whatever it is he seems to think they do. More because of this: That the smiling boy on the couch who believed in the world and love, has mellowed into someone who sits at an auction and loses his house and isn't surprised.

That shouldn't be Ian, Mickey thinks. It should be him instead, or that's what it was, him as the one who'd already resigned himself to the shitty realities of life while Ian tried to fight for them. Fuck, maybe that just means that it's Mickey's turn to fight now.

He takes his palm back. Then he gets up from the mattress, finds his jeans and his smokes, and makes his way downstairs.

Lip is on the couch, sleeping. He’s still at college, Mickey knows, but all the commotion of yesterday made him stay over. Mickey only sees him through the doorway though, and in the kitchen he’s alone, so he puts the coffee on before he shakes a cigarette out of the pack and takes it to the back porch.

The birds are chirping louder outside. The air is morning cold, his sleeveless shirt not really a shield against it, but the smoke feels good going down. It feels like a moment to breathe, him calm as it turns into a stub, which he turns out against the brick.

He sits there for a while. Ten minutes, maybe twenty, looking at the Gallagher van and watching the world awaken. By the time his skin has turned cold to the touch, the floorboards creak inside.

It might be Ian, but it also might be literally anyone else. He doesn't go inside to check, but eventually he gets to know anyway, as the door creeks open to reveal Lip and two cups on coffee, one in each hand.

"Finished brewing," he says, and hands one of them to Mickey. Mickey accepts it, hot between his hands.

"Thanks," he says.

"Can I bum a smoke? Don't have any left."

Mickey nods, fishing the pack out of the pocket of his jeans and handing the whole thing over to Lip. Lip shakes one out and holds it between his lips as he lights it, having to shake the lighter too to get it to work because it's old. Then he hands the packet back over. Sits down and joins Mickey on the steps.

"Sorry about the house," Mickey says. Although he's mostly concerned with Ian, he knows that this family loves two things: their house and each other. But now the house is being sold and, from what Mickey can tell, they're failing a little on the love front too. Trying though, which is more than you could say about life under Terry.

Lip just shrugs anyway.

"We'll figure it out, I guess. Have to, since Frank has started stealing the copper pipes out of everything.”

“Guy’s pretty smart sometimes.”

Lip raises his eyebrows, but Mickey’s not deterred.

“What? Why the fuck should the new owners get anything? They’re the ones buying you out of your home.”

Lip shrugs at that, expression as if he's conceding. 

“Guess so.”

“How’s college?”

“Fucking my professor."

"Not surprised."

"Ian?”

“Don’t know, man. Think you know more than me now."

"Doubt it," Lip says. "Just because he's not talking to you, doesn't mean he's talking to anyone else."

Mickey looks at him.

He seems tired, circles under his eyes and messy hair, and he says it in a way that makes him sound tired too. Mickey thinks he understands, because he thinks they might be made of the same thing; the same love for Ian, part of their fabric the way that blood and bone is.

“Not like he ever talked much before though. At least not in these last few years.”

“Since he ran away?”

“No, since before.”

But Lip looks at him then. Frown on his face as he studies him.

"But he talked to you."

It doesn’t really sound like a question. More like it’s something obvious he’s only just realized.

“Yeah.”

About a lot of things. His mom being back, or Frank not being his dad, or Lip trying to pawn him off on the rich dude who is. About Lip and Karen, or Fiona’s boyfriends, or the courses he needed to take to get into Westpoint. About how he couldn’t jack off at that boy’s home he and Lip ended up at once.

Really, he couldn’t shut up. But now Lip sits here on their porch and nods to himself.

“I don’t know what went wrong,” he says. “He used to come to me, you know, while Fiona took care of the practical shit. But maybe I talked too much about girls, or maybe it’s that fucking pervert’s work or something.”

He shrugs. Looks at Mickey.

“He hasn’t talked for a while.” And then he seems to remember again. “Except to you, I guess.”

Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. Mickey’s not really sure, but he remembers moments anyway. Ian complaining about always living in Lip’s shadow that summer when they were fighting, or Lip coming to him after Ian had run away, because it seemed like Mickey had as good a bet as anyone to get him to come home. A better one, maybe.

The way that after the hospital, Debbie begged him to come back because he seemed to be the only person who could make Ian take his pills.

It feels strange to sit here now, halfway in and halfway out, and consider the implications of that. Didn’t he get it wrong once then? _Not everybody gets to blurt out how they feel every fucking minute?_ Well apparently, neither does Ian, and maybe that means that Mickey’s importance is bigger than he knew.

Ian has talked to him anyway. Yesterday, discussing how he feels about the pills. And before that, showing up to talk about the EMT shit. Hell, even the breakup sounds different in the light of this.

“Maybe,” he says. Because it seems like at least Ian is trying. And Lip nods.

"Yeah," he says. "Maybe."

But then he takes a drag of the cigarette and offers it up to Mickey, and Mickey takes it. Why not? And when they share another expression, smiles on their faces now, Mickey remembers the blood and bone again.

*

Once the second cigarette's a stub, joined with other one, they head back inside to the kitchen where Lip starts making breakfast. In the meantime, Mickey goes back upstairs. To check if Ian’s up, for one. And to put on something warmer.

Ian’s no longer sleeping when he walks inside. Instead he’s lying on his back, head up against the headboard as he looks out the window, palms folded on top of his stomach, which is how he looks when he thinks. As Mickey enters, he looks up though, and then he smiles; a small, warm thing.

“Hey,” Mickey says.

The thing is, maybe if they were two different people, this is where they’d need to talk. About last night, the same room, or whatever is happening now, but instead the two of them have always slotted so easily into place whenever they’ve had the chance, so they don’t. It’s the same as when Mickey got Ian back from the club and it just fell into place; it’s how they work.

“Can I borrow a shirt?” he asks instead.

“Mm. In the drawer.”

Mickey gets one out, a white long-sleeve, and uses Ian’s deodorant before he puts it on too, getting out of his shirt to change. Ian just lies back and watches him.

“What, tough guy?”

Ian smiles. Shrugs.

“Nothing. You can borrow some boxers too.”

He’s joking, clearly, and flirting. Mickey flips him off, but it only widens his smile.

“Are the others up?”

“Yeah. Lip’s making pancakes downstairs, and Fiona already left to look at houses.”

“Oh.”

That mellows him a little, which makes sense. The whole thing must be fucking weird, and although Ian seems to be doing miles better than he has before, it can’t be fun.

"I was thinking of signing up today," he says. “Should probably go there and talk to them about my options.”

"Yeah?"

Mickey thinks about the talking again, as he fiddles around with the short-sleeve shirt to put it on over the one who he just borrowed. After tugging it into place, he sits down on the edge of the bed.

“What are you gonna do?”

“Have to look after the baby. Svetlana’s going to work, some bartending shit.”

“He still okay?”

“Fine, man. Can’t remember a thing of it, so you can calm your tits about it.”

Ian gives him a look at that, but Mickey knows the whole thing is hiding real shit. Ian does love that kid, for whatever fucking reason, so adding almost hurting him to the list of things that mania made him do probably doesn't feel all that great. 

"You could see him whenever you want, you know."

Ian shrugs, looking down. Mickey knows him well enough to know that that's a no.

He's not really keeping track, but he's aware of it anyway. How Ian hasn't seen the kid since they drove from the police station where they picked them up, to the hospital where they left him again. How Ian wouldn't hold him, not even while they were waiting, letting Debbie do it instead. And still: How Ian kissed the top of his head goodbye.

“I don’t know,” Ian says, and Mickey nods; it’s okay. But then Ian looks up, and their eyes meet.

There’s something Mickey’s been thinking of. Something he’s thinking more of now because even though Malcolm X is not exactly MIT, it still costs money, and if those terrible 600 dollars that brought them to that hospital are going to be used for anything, then it should probably be this.

He doesn’t say that now, though. Doesn’t, because Ian is smiling, and because Ian reaches out to fix the label at the back of Mickey’s shirt, tucking it under. And then he slides his palm down over his back, reminding Mickey of last night; fingers in his hair.

“Will you come back later?” he says, and the question’s not a surprise. “Crash here?”

He’s always wanted company. So Mickey nods.

“Sure," he says. "Why the fuck not?”

*

He does go to the Alibi that afternoon, like he said he would. He's there to pick up the kid to entertain for a couple of hours while Svetlana hops from bar to bar in whatever weird quest she has towards working at them at all. That day, she's behind the bar with Vee when Mickey walks in.

"I hear house gets sold," she says when he joins her at the bar. "Bitchy big sister comes in here like storm, asking me to stay."

"What?" Mickey says.

"In apartment upstairs."

"And what'd you say?"

"No."

"Great," Mickey says. "You know they have a kid, right? Liam? Little black boy, I'm sure you've seen him before."

"You give away hard-earned privacy then, if you care."

Well. Mickey would, if it meant taking care of Ian and fuck it, maybe even if it meant paying back that family who let him stay in their house for a while. Who kept in contact with him about prison, fuck, and who he kind of came to feel like he was on a team with, at least when it came to making sure that Ian was safe.

"Thought you were friends with Vee now?" he says instead of saying that. "Perhaps you want to show yourself from your nice side a little? Assuming you have one of those."

"Vee knows who I am. Likes me that way. Honest charm."

"Okay, whatever," he says, but he can tell from her expression that she's joking a little again. He gets it, anyway. At least in that sense they're a little similar, both people who most people find a little tough. Unlikeable. Maybe both people who have the ability to still care, or at least he thinks so when he looks at her and she looks at him.

"Carrot boy okay?" she says, and it only surprises him a little. Fuck, lately it's felt like they've regressed so much that the part of their lives where they kind of slotted into place together feels like a fever dream.

Still, there were moments in there where it seemed like her and Ian had a small friendship going, at the very least born from the fact that Ian actually bothered with the kid when she wanted someone to. He remembers the two of them being in charge of the practicalities of their life. Remembers them dressed up in suits and mink and the room as it echoed with laughter; his own.

He smiles as he shrugs.

"He's fine. The kid?"

"Over there."

She points to the crib in the corner where he's playing with the twins. Why he can't just stay there during the day is beyond him, but then again he does still spend a lot of time crying which is probably not conducive to keeping costumers. Whatever. He goes to grab the kid, then comes back to the counter.

"I'll come by with him later," he says. "Got plans, so be on time."

“I love Lucy plans, I know. You are predictable guy."

He just grimaces at her. It's not worth arguing the point because it's definitely true, and regardless she doesn't say it like a complete insult.

"Whatever," he says, but he's still in a good mood as he goes.

The thing is, everything’s still up in the air. And the thing is, things have looked good before and then failed. But Ian has a plan, and Ian wants him there, and maybe, just maybe, Mickey can see a world in which the clouds part again.

When he comes back to the Gallagher house that evening, Ian is sitting on the couch watching one of those insanely boring fisherman shows that the Gallagher family seems to adore. At the sound of Mickey entering, he turns around for a look. Smiles when he sees it’s him.

“Hey. Yevgeny okay?”

“Yeah. Crawling fucking everywhere so you have to keep an eye on him, but other than that, fine.”

That makes Ian smile, this soft and warm thing. To be honest, Mickey thinks he’s being dumb about the Yevgeny thing. The kid wasn’t hurt, so who gives a fuck about all that. But he knows that Ian does.

He doesn’t say that. Instead he goes to the fridge and takes out a beer for himself, before he crosses back to the living, and dumps himself down besides Ian on the couch. Then he fishes twenty bucks out of the pocket of his jeans and hands them over.

“Here. Put this in your can thing.”

Ian looks at it.

“You know this is not the price of a bottle of Old Style, right?”

“Whatever, Cinderella. Got some cash from the run with Iggy. Buy a popsicle for the kid with the rest or something.”

That makes Ian smile. It always does when Mickey expresses giving a fuck about his family, and it makes him accept the money too, putting it down on the table in front of them. Mickey smiles into the neck of his bottle about it.

“You sign up then?” he asks.

“Yeah. Look at this,” Ian says, reaching out for the table again to a square, paper catalogue with some guy in an EMT uniform on the front page. He hands it over and Mickey flips through it. Skips all the boring parts about the structure and gets to the pictures.

“Pretty nice outfit," he says. Ian snorts.

“Yeah? Better than the cargo pants?”

“Better than you running off and getting your legs shot off in some fuckass warm country somewhere.”

“Ah, right. Asshole.”

But he’s smiling, still, and Mickey does too.

To be honest, things have felt different since last night. Different, or maybe just right, the way they did before. Him on Ian's bedroom floor and at the Gallagher kitchen table and on the living room couch.

It was so easy back then. But maybe a part of it was too easy, or that’s what he thinks now after the conversation with Lip. Because after everything happened, Ian wanted so desperately to talk, and then they never did.

He remembers the aftermath still, so fucking terrible. Remembers how he couldn’t stand anyone touching him. How Ian tried, and Mickey’s stomach lurched so terribly that he reached out with his fist. How he felt like he wasn't even real, so numb and terrified he thinks reality had to go.

Frozen. That’s where it left him. No energy left to fight whatever his dad said.

It took him a long time – weeks, maybe a month – to feel anything resembling a real person again. To be able to even look at Ian, let alone say a word, and he hates that he felt that weak. But he looks at him now. This golden-haired boy.

“Svetlana asked about you,” he says.

“Yeah? How is she?”

“Better than ever, I think. No longer gargling dick all day, which seems like a plus.”

Ian rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling.

“Yeah, okay. She mad at me?”

“For what?”

“Stealing her baby?”

“Relax with that shit, Arizona,” Mickey says. “The baby’s safe and sound.”

“She wanted to kick me out over it.”

“Well, that’s her fucking problem.”

Ian smiles again. It’s mellow though, and joined by him looking at Mickey and tilting his head.

“Is it my fault she doesn’t live there anymore?”

To be honest, it probably is. In the grand scheme of things, of course, seeing as Ian is kind of the reason Mickey stopped giving a shit about pretending she was a real wife, but also in terms of the fight they had about Ian which made her leave.

On the other hand, Ian’s love for the kid is kind of the reason they found their way into that weird, triangle thing in the first place, which Mickey sure as fuck wouldn’t have come up with himself. Now he shrugs.

“Never really wanted her to live there, man,” he says. One of the first things he’s said that’s gotten that close to the truth. “Not a bad thing if it is.”

Ian looks at him then.

He’s thinking of it too, Mickey can tell. Wearing those big, sad eyes that makes Mickey have to fight not to squirm, the way they did when they were offered at the Kash and Grab when Mickey was telling him he didn't mean anything, or the way they did when they were coupled with Ian begging to talk. Wanting to pull what happened into the light, the way Mickey couldn’t bare to do.

But it’s different now. It has to be. So Mickey looks back.

"It was okay for a while right?" Ian says, quietly. "All of us together?"

"It was what it had to be."

Which is true, and Mickey dealt with it, the way he deals with most things. Out of necessity, because there's no other choice. But Ian is right; even with all the bad shit, he was happy in it. For a while.

Ian nods.

"Yeah."

The thing is, Mickey remembers what he said back then. _I can’t stop thinking about it. What happened._ And then he remembers what came afterwards. Ian running away and Mickey finding him again, in a club throwing his head down to swallow down a pill. In their living room, 600 bucks and a porno he said he did for them.

Here's another thing: Picking up Ian from the hospital and being told the story of how they found him. A woman called because he left the car for twenty minutes with a guy from the gay bar across the street.

You would have to be an idiot not to know what it means. And fuck, you’d probably have to be an idiot to believe that was the first time. So sometimes, when Mickey looks at him, it’s hard not to feel like he's drowning.

He still can’t really say that, though. But he opens his arm instead because _fuck_ , he's sick and tired of all the pain and distance and silence.

It makes Ian smile a little, at least. And then it makes him lean in.

They hold each other then, for a moment. A while. Ian puts his arms around him too and keeps them strong, and Mickey thinks maybe this was what he wanted to do before.

They stay there until the clock stops counting. Then, as Mickey puts his lips to Ian’s hair, and Ian puts his face in the crook of Mickey’s neck, they both breathe in.

The mattress is still on the floor that night when they go into Ian’s room, but they don’t need to talk to know that tonight it won’t be used. Instead Ian gets onto the bed. And Mickey joins.

For a long moment they just lie there and look at each other. Then Ian reaches out, palm to his cheek, and leans in. Lips to Mickey’s forehead. And then he smiles.

“Turn around,” he whispers, and Mickey does. Then Ian’s arm sneaks around his waist to pull him in, and as he closes his eyes, Mickey thinks about the first time they fucked.

He could say he didn’t know how it would change his life, but that wouldn’t be true.

He knew it the moment it happened. That he had been a person adamant to not want anything, and that he was trying to keep it up, swiping at the corner of his lips with his thumbs to keep himself from kissing him. That from that moment on it would start spilling out.

And maybe this, now, is where the water collects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, obsessed with water as a motif? it’s more likely than you think. also yes this whole thing is about the past, that’s the whole point asdfghj
> 
> tell me what you thought in the comments? about the end or about the beginning or about the middle, i’m not picky (and yes i will also plug my [tumblr](https://himick.tumblr.com) again)


	7. 7 – Ian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which they’re something, ian exercises, and we end on a surprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *mickey voice* sorry i’m late. but this time i have the excuse that i saw some friends, got a rona test, celebrated my dad’s birthday, and turned 23, so really i've been busy. anyway, let's just say this was a midway hiatus thing or something. hope you enjoy your reading!

When he wakes up in his bed that morning, Mickey is there. Not on the floor, like yesterday. Not downstairs, either. But there in the bed with him.

He’s on his side, Ian slotted up tight against his back, knees against the back of his and arm slung around his waist. They're sharing the same pillow, the way they always do, and over Mickey’s stomach their hands are intertwined. Ian smiles a little as he watches him.

His hair is a little long at the back of his neck, proof that he hasn’t had it cut in a while. He’s wearing a shirt and it looks soft against his skin, milky-white in a way that makes Ian’s smile widen because Mickey always teases _him_ for being pale.

He’s beautiful, Ian thinks again. A raven boy with sadness wrenched so deeply into him, but devotion spilling out.

Yesterday they talked about the past, and it was rough, but it was also good for them. It got them here anyway, back in the same bed, and Ian thinks maybe it eased some of the pressure off his chest. He thinks of that instead of what they talked about then. Of Mickey on the couch because Ian asked him to come, and Mickey in the hospital, the only one Ian really wanted to be held by.

Of Mickey, lying here now, so warm and so soft and smelling just like himself, sleep-warm skin and shampoo, when Ian dips his head down to breathe him in. Deep.

Other things happened yesterday too. For example: Him going down to Malcolm X.

He can see himself in it. Blue uniform, helping people out, doing something real and important with his life. And to be honest, when he imagines it, Mickey is on his side.

Not there, necessarily. Just at home, in his bed. Like he is right now.

Ian looks at him again. Watches how the sun falls in through the blinds and paints stripes of light on Mickey’s skin. Listens to the birds chirping outside, and burrows into the comfortable warmth of being underneath the duvet. Then he pulls away, but before he does, he presses a kiss to Mickey's shoulderblade. And after he’s left the duvet, he lays it back over him again.

To be honest, he feels a little like a boy made of bone-deep wounds with scabs that are itching but healing, the new skin growing underneath like something starting over again. That's what he's thinking of as he takes one last look, before quietly closing the screen door.

Downstairs the kitchen is empty, but the living room is not. Instead he finds Fiona on the couch, sleeping shorts and long socks and the cardigan she always wears in the winter after getting out of bed. It seems like she hasn’t been in it, though.

“Hey,” he says. She looks up.

“Hey.”

She seems tired, he thinks. Quiet. And as he looks at her, he feels a little like a kid who’s suddenly had to discover that his parent can’t actually fix everything. That in fact, the person who usually takes care of him, is just human too.

The thing is, he’s googled around on his own, and he knows there’s no way they can afford to rent someplace else with enough room for all of them. Not with Debbie out of work because of her baby, or with Carl only making scam money that Fiona won’t take. Not with Lip at college, working to keep his scholarship, and not with him working some random minimum wage job until he can work as an EMT. And not even after that will his and Fiona’s wages cover everything.

He sits down besides her now.

“It’s too expensive to rent somewhere else, right?” he says. And for a moment he thinks she’ll lie as if he’s still one of her kids, but then she looks at him and breathes.

“We’ll try,” she says. Honest. “There has to be something decent out there, right?”

That sounds optimistic in a way he’s pretty sure she’s not. But she fights for it; she always has.

“Might take a moment, though. I’m trying to see if we can stay with Sean in the meantime.”

“Okay,” he says. To be honest, he’s not the biggest fan of Sean, and he’s also pretty sure that Sean isn’t the biggest fan of him, and that he lives in an apartment that’s quite small. “We can stay with Mickey too, if that doesn’t work out.”

Fiona raises her brows at him.

“Really?" she says. "Have you decided that?”

“No, he said it. All of us, I asked. He said he wouldn’t just leave Liam on the street.”

That makes her smile a little. He does too. And although he knows that Fiona hates accepting help from people outside of the family, he also knows that things are a little different with Mickey. Maybe because he’s already lived in the house, maybe because he does it for Ian more than he does it for her.

Or maybe because he’s halfway family too. Or was for a while.

“His psycho wife would,” she says then, and he snorts. He heard the story from Fiona about asking for a place to stay at the Alibi top room, and then he heard it from Mickey too.

Not that he really blames her. But he did wonder if some of her reluctance was not just wanting to keep her privacy, but some residue anger towards him. She’d be allowed, anyway. He did try to take her kid.

“Svetlana just does a lot to protect her own,” he says.

“Right. Like saying we should call the police on you?”

“I stole her baby.”

“I thought you said you took him for a ride?” Fiona asks. She’s joking though, or so it seems, and the thought of that makes him smile.

“Maybe that was a little nuts,” he says. A joke too, which makes her smile before she reaches out to caress his hair.

It’s what she did in the hospital. Hand across it, the same way she did that time he was really sick and they had to walk all the way to the hospital because Frank and Monica were gone, and he almost died from it. So maybe there’s a part of him she still sees as her kid.

“He up there now?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Your boyfriend again?”

He shrugs.

It’s not that he thinks the answer’s no. It’s more that he doesn’t know how to explain it to her; that they’re something, and that Ian loves him, and that he can’t stop thinking about how the manic guy will be back or how Mickey knows about the porn but not the rest of it.

He’s scared he’s a bad person. He’s scared he asks for too much or too little, unable to find the middle ground, asking for Mickey’s total devotion and asking everyone else for absolutely nothing. Letting them walk all over him, touch him however they like. He’s scared he’s not actually very good at receiving love.

Fiona doesn’t think that though. Instead she smiles and reaches out to ruffle his hair.

“Alright,” she says. “Keep your secrets then.”

But when Mickey comes down, he pours him a cup of coffee without asking and as he takes his meds, Mickey smiles about it like he’s pleased, and well–

Maybe he was right; that’s something, at least.

*

In the meantime, while they wait, he starts exercising again.

Or correction: He makes Mickey build a new obstacle course for him, and then he uses it while Mickey sits in the sky and smokes, the way he did once before.

Well. Not exactly like before, because this time he’s in his big winter coat, cigarette smoke and misty breath coming out of his lips in tandem. It’s cold, and yet he’s here, and that makes Ian warm.

Because he’s thinking about Fiona, he’s thinking about how she used to run track. About how she was about to make state, part of it natural inclination but part of it that she knew how to work hard. About how she’s not naturally clever like Lip, the same way he isn’t, but about how she knows to put one foot in front of the other and get it done.

That’s what he knows how to do too. _You put in enough hours, study hard, you can learn anything_ , as he told Mickey once. And maybe he learned that from her.

As he crawls under one of the obstacles, Mickey pulls the cigarette from his lips with a smile.

“You know, Private Ryan,” he calls down. “Not sure you’re gonna be using these skills while driving around in an ambulance.”

“Fuck off,” Ian says. “It’s good exercise.”

“Right. And tell me why you couldn’t go to a gym instead of dragging me into helping your scrawny ass in the freezing cold?”

“Money,” Ian says. “And making sure my ass is not scrawny for much longer.”

That makes Mickey grin, and Ian smiles too.

It feels good to be back here, doing shit like this. It reminds him of other times, two teenage boys in the sweltering heat, his own heart bright and hopeful because of how Mickey was opening up. These jokes they made, and the play-fighting.

Mickey might be his best friend.

At first that was Lip, then Mandy, and he still counts the two of them, but something happened those two summers in a row. At the Kash and Grab, in all those moments they weren’t having sex but shooting the shit and talk and laughing about shit.

Ian remembers it all. Talking to Mickey about the homework he was doing to get into Westpoint, then working on it while Mickey read a magazine, occasionally commenting on the random crap it said. The two of them bored out of their mind, throwing back and forth a can of chickpeas and keeping score in the margins of Ian’s notebook.

The two of them buying a six-pack and making a sandwich and walking the Southsides pavements thin in the late summer evenings, chatting and laughing and finding a hidden place to fuck.

Mickey’s smiles were so big during those summers, and even if he was still trying to grumble his way through resisting it, Ian had known the truth. Really, he couldn’t have missed it.

Now Mickey shrugs where he sits.

“It doesn’t matter to me, man,” he says, which Ian thinks is true even if he doesn’t share the sentiment. Mickey didn’t seem to give a fuck anyway, at the dugouts when Ian could only pull himself up once. But Ian wants his strength back.

“Just finish your cigarette,” he says, and Mickey grins as he does.

There are other things that happened here too, of course, and Ian thinks of those as well in the way he thinks of everything; trying not to look too directly at it. Mickey shooting at that bottle, Mickey’s fist to his face, Mickey so silent and Ian so sad.

It’s easier to accept now that they’ve both acknowledged it though. And either way, Ian knows that Mickey would rather die than hurt him again. Knows, because that was the call he made in the Alibi on the day he finally came out.

Fuck, there’s so much past in them. But most of it right now is good, which is why Ian runs around for a little while longer, and then hops up by Mickey’s side and steals the cigarette from in-between his lips. Unlike those summers from before, Mickey lets him without complaint.

“This was much easier without you shooting at me,” Ian says. Mickey grimaces at him.

“I’m the one with a scar on my ass from your stupid shit.”

“I don’t recall asking you to try and steal an antique clock.”

“You said the woman was harmless!”

“That’s what Ned told me.”

“Whatever.”

But Mickey’s grinning, and Ian shoves him a little bit, just to get shoved back.

“Can’t we just blame Iggy?” he says.

“I am blaming Iggy. Fucking moron.”

Ian snorts.

To be honest, he kind of misses Iggy, in the way you miss things from the past. Not because they talked a lot, but because they lived together, and because there were days when he was still feeling depressed and Mickey and Svetlana were off at the Alibi, when he’d sit with Iggy and Mandy and Yev on the couch and watch TV.

Maybe it’s just the having a life with Mickey that he misses.

“Isn’t he the reason you have money right now?” he asks, instead of saying all that.

“Yeah, but even if he knows how to get the stuff, he’s about a step above you when it comes to scamming ability.”

Ian scoffs.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“ _Trip_?”

Okay, that might be fair. Mickey doesn’t have to say more for Ian to know, anyway. Suitcase, guy bringing it. Maybe he was manic as fuck, but he still remembers it, and remembers Mickey’s expression at him, so hilariously exasperated as if he’d never heard a dumber thing in his life.

“I’d just woken up,” he defends himself now, although not with a lot of conviction.

“Sure you had, princess.”

That makes him shove Mickey again, which makes Mickey grin so wide, like he did when they were in their bed wrestling. Now they’re doing it here instead, both of them only halfway fighting to get the upper hand. Ian grabs his arm though, holding onto it to keep it down as he slaps Mickey’s cheeks a couple of times.

“Who’s the princess now, huh?”

“Fuck off.”

But as Mickey shoves him off, they’re both still grinning. And as they stop fighting, they still sit close enough to touch.

To be honest, Ian kind of wants to kiss him again.

Not in the way he wanted to the last time they fucked, angry and wanting to divert it somewhere else. Not in the way he honestly kind of wanted to last night, half-sad and sorry, but in a way that's happy instead. Something he’s thinking of because Mickey is Mickey and Ian is feeling good.

He doesn't though, because he shouldn't. Because it might be right that they're something, and that they've always fallen together in easy ways before, but this time is kind of different. He did stand there and say those words, so he can't just do whatever the fuck he wants anymore.

Instead he lies back, face facing the sky, not summer-sunny but clear and cold in that early winter way.

“You trying to freeze your dick off?” Mickey asks, but he still lies down besides him. He always does.

The thing is, Mickey is good. Kind, to both Ian and his family in a way that Ian can't even fathom sometimes. The owner of this giant fucking heart that he wears right on his sleeve, even when he's trying not to, and the thing is that Mickey also makes him feel really good. Like maybe everything will turn out okay. So Ian twists to look at him. 

“You think I’ll be able to do it?” he says.

“What?”

“EMT.”

“That a serious question?”

Ian grins.

“Yeah,” he says, still, just to see what he’ll say.

“I think you spent like a hundred hours at the Kash and Grab trying to learn some fuckass equations that are good for nothing.”

“That tell you about trajectories.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever helps you sleep at night, G.I. Joe,” Mickey says, which makes Ian smile again. “Fuck knows I’ve never been able to deter you out of one of your many ideas, stupid or not. Don’t see why this would be different.”

“You could come with me,” Ian says. “We could go to school together.”

“Fuck no. I have a career.”

“Scamming?”

“It’s worked so far, right?”

“Sure,” Ian says.

To be honest he’s mostly teasing and doesn’t really care, because he thinks Mickey’s right. It works so far and anyway, he has a hard time imagining Mickey in a nine-to-five that doesn’t involve getting fucked in the back room by Ian once an hour. Not that that wasn’t fun.

“I guess you’ll just be a kept man, then.”

That’s pushing it, he knows, but at the same time it can't really be a surprise. Where the fuck else would they be going with all this? Still, Mickey looks at him.

“A kept man? What, to you?”

Ian shrugs. He can tell Mickey didn’t expect that, because at first he was just looking at him, but now his eyebrows raise and his eyes become serious.

For a long, long time he studies him, and Ian lets him look. Wonders what he sees in there. That he loves him, maybe. That he’s serious. That it’s not over yet and that he did need the break that the breakup gave, but that it’s also becoming something he’d like to take back.

They keep looking at each other then. But then Mickey smiles and turns to look back at the sky.

“Well, you have to beg for me back first, then.”

Ian grins.

“Ah alright.”

But he’s happy. So happy, because it’s not a rejection at all, and because Mickey is smiling, and because maybe all they are doesn’t have to be pain. Mickey shakes his head, then shoves him again.

“Asshole,” he says, but with no heat. “You’ve got some nerve, you know. Didn’t even see me in prison and now you’re giving me this?”

“I’m a dick,” Ian agrees.

“You’re lucky you’re hot, is what you are.”

“I’m what?”

Micke flips him off, but he’s happy, and Ian’s happy, and they’re on the road to the right thing.

If only that was the end.

*

Two things happen at once.

Firstly, they come back that afternoon to all of the Gallagher possessions on the front lawn, Debbie on the porch, and Fiona yelling at the sheriff carrying out their shit.

It’s useless though. Apparently it doesn’t matter that the new owners have allowed them to stay; not when the bank’s decided it wants them out.

Fuck.

Ian can’t really deal with this, but they have to. So Sean gets them boxes, and they all start packing, and Mickey stays to help. It’s all working out until there’s voices yelling downstairs.

At first it’s just Fiona, then Sean, and Ian catches the eye of Lip and Mickey who are in the boy’s room packing too. He doesn’t really react though, and doesn’t really feel like he needs to, until the door slams and then opens and a third voice says hello.

His mom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) oops and 2) what would we do without a classic end of act 2 twist? i swear the point with this is lets-let-ian-come-to-terms-with-his-past-centric and also that it'll all be alright
> 
> anyway why don't you make me happy and let me know what you thought of everything? i always love hearing from you!


	8. 8 – Mickey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which they deal with monica's return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) this one is longer than they usually are. i guess that's just what happens when monica returns  
> 2) this chapter is basically mickey and fiona are friends propaganda. this won't surprise you if you follow my tumblr asdfgh  
> 3) i hope you enjoy!

Theres a second where they’re all standing in Ian’s old bedroom, looking at each other. Then Ian’s turned on his heel, out of the door, leaving Mickey and Lip to rush downstairs after him.

Monica’s there, in the front yard. Blonde hair, gesturing arms, her voice as she yells at the sheriff familiar to Mickey, who’s seen her in the Alibi many times before. Who knows of her, the way everyone around the back of the yards does. Who can use his fingers to count off all the other times she came back.

Fuck.

Ian is still on the steps, him and Lip right behind him. Debbie and Fiona are there in the front yard too, and then Ian speaks.

“Mom?”

This time, Mickey thinks, it’s all about him. Him, who recently ran away with her, and who shares her disease now. Who they all keep telling Mickey about. At least they all look at him. Then Monica too.

“Ian,” she says, so light and so happy, sounding almost like a child. This grin on her face, like she's just ecstatic to see him. "My beautiful boy."

She reaches out for him, getting closer, but he only lets her touch him for a second before he steps back. Angry clench to his jaw.

The thing about this stuff, Mickey knows from his own shitty fucking family, is that there’s always a part of it that feels almost expected.

That’s how it’s sounded when Ian’s talked about it before too. She shows up, and then the next day she’s making everyone lunches, and people might be pissed, but it takes a while for that to build into the screaming that comes out in the end. Maybe that’s why, now, he just shakes his head.

“What are you doing here?” he says. “Meth dealer pull a Bob and give up on you?”

“Frank told me about the house. I thought I would come help.”

“Ah, right. Help.”

Ian shakes his head again, and Mickey remembers how he can be so fucking petty when he wants. _We mostly just fuck. You’re a nurse now?_ These things he only says when he’s really pissed off.

“Didn’t know you knew that word.”

“Ian,” Fiona says, for some fucking reason, but Ian doesn’t seem to care much.

“This is bullshit,” he says, before he turns around and walks back inside, leaving the rest of them there to stare at each other. At her, as she turns to Lip.

“Lip,” she says, but Lip shakes his head too.

“I don’t fucking think so," he says, and then he leaves too, leaving behind a silent, pregnant Debbie and Fiona who's wearing this gloating, half-angry smile on her face, as she picks up a cardboard box.

“Well, there you go,” she says. “That’s your welcome back. You still wanna help?”

They look at each other, as Fiona presses the box into Monica’s arms.

“Then start packing shit.”

*

When Monica takes the box, Fiona turns around on her heels and storms inside too.

She's as angry as the rest, Mickey thinks, familiar with the way her face looks when she's really, really mad, the way that anyone who's lived on the Southside long enough to see her yelling at Frank in the Alibi is. But fuck, why shouldn't she be? Although to Mickey she’s always been the authority on Gallagher matters, a sort of irreproachable figure of all things relating to Ian and his mom, he’s remembering now that she’s Monica’s daughter too.

He follows her then, except not completely. Leaves behind the mess outside, and then the mess of Fiona angrily packing up the kitchen, as he heads back upstairs.

Ian’s in the boy’s room, as Mickey expected. He’s sitting on the edge of his childhood bed, staring down at the floor with something blank and tired on his face, but when Mickey steps in through the door, he looks up.

“You okay?”

Mickey knows he’s probably not. He’s seen this look before either way, new meds and new diagnosis, or behind the Kash and Grab counter the first time she came back. A nothingness that's too familiar to him now.

Ian shrugs.

"She always does this shit, you know," he says. "Comes back like nothing happened, and then expects everything to just be okay."

Like she has before, Mickey thinks. That time she came back to take Liam from them, dropping the bomb that Ian isn’t Frank’s kid as she did it. The next time, manic and then depressed, which are words Mickey only knows the reality of now, the whole thing culminating in her blood all over the kitchen floor.

And then there’s the latest parts. The one where she made him run off with her from military prison, and did whatever the fuck she did to make Ian stand on his porch that day, and tell Mickey he wanted to break up.

"Yeah," Mickey says. "I know."

Ian looks at him. Eyes surprised, then not, like perhaps he remembers the same thing; how long Mickey's known him for. Then he looks back down at his hands.

"Sometimes I think she's worse than Frank."

He doesn't.

Mickey knows that because he knows him. Because if he really did, he wouldn’t be blank-faced and angry now, but indifferent in the same way he's always been to Frank. He wouldn’t have run off with her twice, or begged Mickey for company the first time she returned.

Mickey doesn’t say that to him, of course. It’s not like Ian doesn’t know. Instead he comes over to the bed, sitting down on the edge of it by Ian's side. Their shoulders touching.

"Pretty sure that's the first time anyone's said that about that fucker," he says, just to make Ian smile. Ian does just a little, still looking down.

"Yeah, well," he says. "First time for everything."

But they both know he doesn't mean it, which is why Mickey reaches out to put his arm around his shoulders. To pull him in and press a comforting kiss to the top of his head.

Less than three hours ago, they were sharing a smoke and laughing and talking about something close to getting together again. Ian's stupid face was splitting in a grin the way it did back when they first began too, and Mickey had felt so light and at ease, but _less than three hours ago_ is a thought he's used to. _We were at the dugouts, drinking beer. I was trying to stall him going to work._

Compared to all of that, this one’s not so bad. Especially not when Ian leans into him.

They sit like that for a moment or two, just quiet next to each other. Then a knock on the doorframe announces Lip, standing with a pack of smokes in his hands.

"Want one?" he says, and Ian nods, so Lip takes one out and lights it, taking the first drag. "Fucking Monica, huh?"

"Yeah," Ian says, as he takes the smoke from him. He's mellow though, and doesn't elaborate, but then maybe that's not unusual for him. Either way Mickey takes his arm back, as Ian takes his drag, then accepts the smoke when he hands it on and takes his own too. By the time he hand it back over to Lip, Fiona appears in the doorway too.

"She's downstairs now," she says. Lip hands the cigarette onto her and she takes it, clearly frustrated. "She wants to hire movers. Rent a storage place."

"Oh yeah? With what money?" Lip says.

"Fuck if I know. The stolen kind?"

"Or the meth kind," Ian says. They all look at him. "Her boyfriend cooks it."

"Great, well... Why am I not surprised?"

Ian shrugs, but he doesn't speak, and Mickey thinks this can't be easy for him. No matter who Monica is, she's someone everyone has been telling him about since Ian got sick. Carl, who said she thought she could fly. Debbie, who said that Frank tries to drink her illness away. Fiona who said he might have what their mother has. Who tried to get him pardoned in the interrogation room.

_She put us through hell. I’m not saying you put us through hell._

Mickey was watching him then too, seeing the way his face closed off. And he's watching him now, as Fiona hands the cigarette back too Lip.

"What happened with you and Sean then?"

"Fuck," she says. "Asshole said he would host me and Liam and no-one else."

"Ah."

She doesn’t have to elaborate, not even to Mickey. He knows about the Gallagher family loyalty code.

The thing is, a couple of days ago he already offered. Said it to Ian, who's looking at him now in a way that means he definitely isn't getting out of offering it again. Not that he really wants to.

"I got a house," he says. Fiona looks at him, raised brows. "It's a dump, but... Hosted a whole pack of whores and thousand suitcases once, so it can host a chick and a kid."

"That a real offer?" Fiona says. He shrugs.

“We’ll make up Mandy’s room for you and the kid.”

She smiles.

"Okay."

*

The thing is, him and Fiona have been on a team through something before.

Mickey remembers it. Going with her to the hospital, talking to her while Ian slept, living in her house while Ian was at military prison, and driving up there together. The way they were worried in the same way and the way that Fiona accepted him enough to let him be the one at the doctor, getting Ian’s meds. To let him be the one to call him first when they’d learned that he’d run away with Monica again.

Maybe it started in this room. Ian in his bed, so sick, and her besides the dining table, telling him about their mom. _He might have what our mother has._

Now they sit across from each other, both drinking beers as she’s having another smoke, her face half hidden behind her hand. It hasn’t crumbled tonight, but he’s seen it crumble before, just a moment before it shapes up again. 

They’re kind of alike like that, he thinks, him a person who only ever starts to cry too. Both breadwinners of their family and people who make it their mission to look after the people they love.

Like Ian. Because Mickey loves him, and that's not a new thought now. Because Mickey is worried about him and about what might happen, and because all Mickey really wants is for him to be okay. _Let me take care of him until he’s better. Sickness, health, all that shit._

But who knows if that’s gonna be an option now? He doesn’t, and maybe that’s why he looks at Ian’s sister who’s the person he’s asked all his questions to before.

“You think it’s gonna be like last time?” he asks this time.

He sounds young, he thinks. Younger than he likes, but the truth is that he’s not even twenty yet. That maybe he's just a boy who's fought very hard for a very long time.

“Which part of last time?” she asks. “Him running off with her?"

Even though they're tough words, they come out gently.

"I fucking hope not.”

Mickey feels the same. Because he cares, but also because it's hard to feel left behind; a feeling that's been lurking all this time as he's tried to focus on the worry instead.

Fiona breathes out again then, and takes another drag of the smoke. Wipes her hand over her face, exhaustion like a layer over her skin that reminds him of seeing the ugly, bloodied bruise on Mandy’s face and knowing that right now, he was helpless to stop it. That he no longer knew how to storm in and save her, the way he did when they just two kids.

“I was nine when she left the first time,” Fiona says. “But he was just four. The youngest, which means when she came again, he let her. And loved her.”

She sounds almost sad when she says that, and Mickey imagines it. Her just a kid, knowing way too much already, the way Mickey remembers being eight and already knowing that a boy who loves another boy is already dead.

“It’s funny, because it seems like it’s so easy for him to hate Frank. And I’ve seen the way he knows how to hold a grudge.”

They both smile. Mickey remembers that summer him and Lip were fighting all the time, and the way Ian simply refused to let it go.

"But I don't know," she says, and the implication's clear. Somehow, it’s different with her.

It’s kind of like Mandy, Mickey thinks.

Mandy, who spent so long being this happy, innocent girl who knew how to fight, sure, but also how to be sweet. The baby, who they all rallied to take care of, willing to beat up anyone the moment she asked, and who kept cooking eggs for them all no matter how many times they let her down.

No wonder that her and Ian liked each other so much at first. But the difference between them, Mickey thinks, is that Mandy hardened up and lost herself behind the shell, while Ian lost hope but kept his vulnerability.

With him, it’s not really an Achille’s heel. Instead it’s the whole fucking chest.

And the thing is, Mickey could say that he doesn’t understand, but it wouldn’t really be true. He remembers anyway, his own mom and how he loved her for a long time and maybe still do, despite what she left them with. And he remembers his own dad.

It’s probably true what Ian said: He’s an evil, psychotic prick. But for so long – even after that worst day of his life – a part of Mickey wanted his approval anyway.

He doesn’t say that, but her and Fiona look at each other again. And Fiona shrugs.

“And you?” Mickey says.

“Me?” she says, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to dismiss the question. But then she hides her face in her hands instead.

He understands, he thinks, as her face contorts and clenches together, the way he's seen it do before. Having parents who have fucked you over, and still feeling things you don't really want to admit. Trying to stay strong for everyone and failing.

"Fuck. Debbie hates me," she says. "Ian's sick, I'm fighting with Sean, I haven't gotten my stupid abortion yet, and I can't buy back my house. This might as well fucking happen."

He knows what she means. Fuck, it’s the motto of his fucking life, which is why he understands it when she squares up her shoulders again.

"Thanks for letting us stay," she says. Not really changing the topic, because he knows how it's related. Sometimes a kind hand means everything.

"Whatever. It's family or some shit, right?" 

That might be too much to say now. But it still feels true to him, and maybe to her too, because she smiles.

"Yeah," she says. Then changes her tone a little, pointing at him. "But if you ever get Debbie involved in that shit again–"

He smiles too.

"I'll break both your kneecaps in your sleep. Not kidding."

He lets out a small laugh.

So much for being a scary thug terrorizing the neighborhood but fuck, if there's anyone who wouldn't care, it's Fiona with her kids. And anyway, if she was ever scared of him, he thinks he lost it that day in this room with Ian sick and him panicked out of his mind. That day in the hospital, her watching him standing there in his button-up, as he almost cried.

That felt shameful for a while, the way his dad taught him it should. The way that makes crying feel week and fear feel like currency and letting anyone other than Ian see the real him fucking hard. But people have seen him; a lot of them. Ian, Mandy, Fiona, Lip. Fuck, Svetlana, Iggy, and Kevin too, and everyone else who was there on the day he came out.

A different, slowly-growing part of him likes it instead, then. Likes this sense that maybe him and Fiona on the same team, banded together by something bigger than them or the Southside rules. 

“Sorry,” he says, but they're smiling.

“Damn right you are.”

But as she nods at him, he knows that they're okay.

*

It takes a few minutes more, but eventually Ian comes out of the shower, well-worn t-shirt and boxers, and joins them at the table. His shirt belongs to himself, one of the ones he left here. His hair’s still wet.

“Drinking?” he says, nodding to the beers. Fiona shrugs.

"Works for Frank, right?"

Ian snorts.

"Yeah, I guess. The shower’s free if you want."

“Towels are in the cupboard,” Mickey adds, and she nods, turning out the stub of her smoke in the ashtray before she gets up and heads to the bathroom instead.

It leaves the two of them alone. There in the quiet of the house, only the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of water spilling out of the shower-head to keep them company. Ian reaches out for Mickey’s beer, looking at it for a second before he takes a swig of it.

“Good?” Mickey says.

"The first drink I've had since the dugouts."

When they went there, after everything, or maybe before. It feels like so long ago, but Mickey smiles, remembering how he'd felt when Ian had said something similar. _The first I’ve felt anything, since…_ He’d reached out to touch his hair then, and he does the same thing now.

"Tasted kind of weird with blood mixed in." 

Ian snorts.

"Shut up," he says, but Mickey just smiles too. Until Ian looks at him anyway, smile mellowing. "Sorry about that."

"The fight? Fuck, if we started holding shit like that against each other, I don’t know where we’d be.”

“A better place, maybe? There’s a lot of shit you should probably be holding against me.”

That’s the kind of stuff he’s said before. The _too much is wrong with me_ kind of stuff, and it doesn’t surprise Mickey that he’s digging it back up now, after his mom’s back. Not when he remembers again. _She put us through hell. I’m not saying you put us through hell._

“Yeah, well. Ditto.”

“You’re too nice to me, Mickey.”

“Will you shut the fuck up?”

That makes him smile again. Sweet for a moment before he looks down again. Then shrug.

“At least when she’s manic, she’s kind,” he says then. “Buys us shit, and tells Fi to go running again, and bakes us all cookies, and buys Debbie dolls. I just turn into a dick.”

"Hey, now," Mickey says. "Don't sell yourself too short. You cleaned this piece of shit house, that was pretty nice. And getting smacked in the face by a dildo was sort of funny.”

Ian snorts. Shakes his head.

“You’re a dick,” he says, but softly, and Mickey knows him so well. Knows why he’s sitting here now, falling apart at the seems. Knows that he needs to be told that he’s not so bad. And knows why he looks up now, to look into his eyes.

“Mick,” he says, same soft tone. And then he leans in.

They haven’t kissed since the alley. Fuck, they haven’t kissed like this – soft with a tinge of longing – since God knows when. Maybe that day at the dugouts, after the dust had settled again.

Mickey kisses him back. It's just one kiss anyway, another, and then they pull apart to rest their foreheads together instead.

This wasn't a surprise. Of course this is where they were going, and maybe that's why Mickey puts his palm to Ian's cheek, caressing it with his thumb. He never knew he could be like this, soft and so gentle, but it comes out of him like second nature that's only just started to bloom. Like a physical manifestation of all this fucking love and concern, and the way that all he wants is what he said to Fiona then. To take care of him until he's feeling better.

"Sorry," Ian whispers, but Mickey shakes his head.

"Don't worry, tough guy," he whispers. "Let's just go to bed."

And they do. But as they lie in the bed that night, Mickey watches his eyes staying open to the dark. Him on his side as Ian looks at up the ceiling; white.

“We talked about you,” he whispers then.

He doesn’t have to elaborate about when or who, and it's another thing that doesn't leave Mickey surprised. Not really, not with what happened after he came back.

“Okay?” he says.

“She remembered I’d talked about you before. The second time you were locked up.”

With the Frank thing, Mickey thinks. After Mickey stood in front of him and said he was just a warm mouth.

"She told me she was sure you meant well." And then he looks at Mickey. “And she told me we’ll always break people’s hearts.”

The thing is, it's so easy for things to start sinking again.

*

He tries to argue against it that night. Tell him it's fucking bullshit, which Ian nods about but which Mickey has the feeling he only half accepts. He stays awake for a long time, looking at him in the dark, and he tries not to let the hopeless feeling crawl into his heart again.

In the morning, while they’re sitting around the dining table, Ian and Fiona get a text.

It makes Fiona roll her eyes, and Ian's jaw clench, as he hands the phone over to Mickey for him to see. An invitation. From Monica, of course, to dinner at some random address she must be staying at. 

“Guess she’s done with the meth-dealer life,” Ian says, bitterly. But Mickey knows them enough to know that they’re all gonna go. And they do, sharing a smoke on the pavement before they go in.

The address in the text has turned out to be North Side and belong to some old woman who Monica has wheedled her way into staying with, true Frank style. Mickey doesn’t want to know, so he doesn’t ask, but just from the outside the grander of the whole thing makes him feel a little restless. He doesn’t belong in places like this, the way that Ian can, and since he hasn’t been back here since him and Ian scammed that rich pervert queen at the hotel, it’s making him feel a little guilty too.

To be honest, he didn’t really think much of it then. But then Ian came with those 600 bucks that he got on some fuckass porn set, and Mickey started thinking that ever pimping him out – even in that fake way – was a really fucking bad idea.

He doesn’t say that now, but he smokes, the winter Chicago cold already biting his fingers. Maybe Ian sees him feeling antsy, because he looks at him.

“You don’t have to join, you know,” he says. “It’s fucked up normally, but whenever Monica’s there…”

Mickey raises his brows at him. Fucked up doesn’t really cover what him and Ian’s already been through, so he doesn’t know why he’d have any reason to back off now. Ian seems to understand. At least he smiles a little.

“Okay, whatever. You ready then?”

Mickey nods, as he throws down the cigarette butt and turns it out against the pavement with the sole of his shoe.

“Lead the way then, Cinderella,” he says. And Ian does.

It gets them both inside. Up the stairs to a second floor apartment, just as big and bright as the outside suggested. They only just have time to look around, before Monica appears in the hallway, blond-haired hurricane again.

To be honest, Mickey always thought she looked too bubbly to be associated with a bum like Frank. Too happy, and too tender with him, and definitely too sensitive, the way he remembers her being this one time when he was thirteen and at the Alibi with Terry, watching her crying loud enough for Terry to scoff and call her a bitch.

Then again though, whenever he saw her and Frank drinking or drugging each other under the table for some fun, they seemed to be equally destructive forces. That’s a thought that’s returning to him now, as he watches her reach out for Ian, who steps again. 

He’s angry at her, still. Angry in the way he wasn’t when it was just the two of them, where it was swallowed up by sadness instead, but in the way that’s been returning slowly over the course of the day.

She lets him go. Barely reacts, just smiling at him instead.

“You came,” she says, her tone so juvenile and happy. The same one she used yesterday. 

“Yeah,” Ian says.

“And Mickey, right? Your boyfriend?”

Well. He was, but Ian doesn’t correct her now. Just shrugs.

"I remember you, you know," Monica says then, now speaking to him. "The first time I heard about about you, you were in juvie, and Ian here was so moody about it. But we danced all night to forget it. Remember that, baby?”

“Yeah,” Ian says, but the monosyllable is closed off. Joined by his angry chin. “Come on.”

He’s saying that to Mickey too, arm on his elbow to guide him along. To the dinner table, where they sit down, and Ian simmers in silence until Monica joins them too.

They’re all there now. Fiona, Liam, Debbie, Carl and Lip. No Frank, but maybe Monica’s just as over him as everyone else is. Either way she sits down, over-eager and smiling at them all, putting her hand to the top of Liam's head where he's sitting besides her, before she speaks.

"God, I missed you all," she says, folding her hands together in front of her chest as she looks around at them. No one responds, and they certainly don't do it in kind, but that doesn't seem to deter her. "Anyway. I brought you all here because I have something to give to you."

“Oh, great,” Lip says, sarcastic. “Presents. Christmas came early this year.”

She ignores him, placing a bag onto the table instead, pulled there from underneath her chair. Then pushes it across to Fiona, who raises her brows.

“Open it, Fi.”

She looks skeptical, but does it. Then scoots back quickly.

“What the fuck?”

The bag is full of meth. Pounds of it, at least a hundred thousand dollars worth, or so Mickey thinks from the quick look at it. Dealing’s never been his thing, too caught up with guns and ammo runs which has a bigger payoff for less legwork. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know a fortune when he sees it.

“Parting gift from the guy I was seeing,” Monica says. And then, to Fiona: “To buy back the house.”

“No way,” Fiona says, as Ian says, “ _Gift_?”

Monica waves her hand as if to wave the question away.

“Really? So Walter Whatever is not gonna come back here, looking to get his shit back?”

“No. We have an agreement.”

“Sure, Mom. Unbelievable.”

“And what do you want us to do with it?” Lip says. “ _Sell_ it? With what connections?”

“Mine,” Carl says.

“No way,” Fiona repeats again. “If you as much as try, I’ll do much more than rip those cornrows right out of your head. This isn’t weed on the corner.”

“I know that, I know the game.”

“Ian’s boyfriend could do it, right?”

That’s Monica again. But Ian quickly shakes his head.

“No,” he says. And then, to Mickey: “No. You get caught with this shit on you, they won’t ask questions. You’ll be going down, for real this time.”

That might be true, but fuck, who says they'll get caught? Mickey could scrape up Colin and Joey from whatever dump they're crashing at, round up Iggy too, and have it sold to the highest bigger in no time.

“It could get you back the house," he says.

“I don’t give a fuck. Your adult record’s still clean, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Well maybe he knows what he’s doing.”

“Stay the fuck out of this, Mom.”

That comes out strong enough to make everyone silent. He's very rarely like this, and probably even more rarely like this towards his mom, although Mickey remembers it. This tone that Ian’s voice only gets when he’s really fucking mad.

Now he looks at her.

“What do you think’s gonna happen with this? You come back like a savior, and we forget about everything else? _I_ forget about everything else, the two us just square now because you stole some meth from your boyfriend and cooked us one meal?”

“No, baby," she says. "I know you’re mad at me.”

"You do? Because you're not really acting like it."

"I'm sorry I took you away."

"You really think that's it?"

"I'm sorry you got my genes."

She really shouldn’t have said that.

Mickey knows that because he knows him, and because he knows his family and sees the way they all pull back as if they’ve been slapped. See the way Ian reacts just like he’s been slapped, only he’s never been one to flinch, but one to grow still. Dangerous and provocative, daring you to make yourself into someone who'd lay a hand on someone you love.

Across the table, Mickey catches Lip's eyes. Watches it as Fiona closes hers, preemptive exhaustion, and fights with his own hand not to put his head into it. He knows the implications. He was there in that room. _She put us through hell._

It's silent in the room, from all of them. Then the chair screeches across the floor as Ian gets up.

“Fuck you, Mom,” he says, before he walks away.

*

Mickey follows, of course.

At first, he stays there for a second to watch Fiona sinking her head into her hands, and Carl staring silently at his plate. To watch Lip glare daggers at Monica, and Debbie look after Ian with this sad look on her face. Then he gets up.

“Wait up, Usain,” he says when he’s outside, but Ian continues walking as he shakes his head.

“I’m staying with Lip tonight, okay?” he says.

"What? Why?"

"Because I shouldn't have stayed with you at all, Mickey. I've let you be too nice to me."

"Are you serious right now? Your mom's a dick, but come on. Things are going pretty fucking alright, aren't they?"

"Yeah," Ian says. "Now."

They're both stopped in their tracks now. Ian has turned around to look at him, and they're on the street, distance between them way too big, and Mickey knew this would happen. Knew from the moment Ian talked about breaking his heart, which doesn't make the crash feel any less shit.

"But you don't know half the shit I've done."

Mickey almost scoffs at him.

Of course he fucking knows, even if he didn’t for a while. About the porn and the 600 bucks. About whatever pathetic fuck Ian did something with to pay for Mickey’s kid while he was running off with him. About how the porn was cheating, but Ian didn’t see it like that, which means it probably didn’t only happen that once.

"I don't know, Ian. If I recall correctly, _I'm_ the one you brought those 600 bucks home to. I think I have some fucking idea."

He can tell that bringing it up makes Ian feel shit, this stricken, sad thing on his face that Mickey didn't want to bring out but did anyway. But then he shakes his head again.

"That's only some of it."

"And what the fuck do you want me to do with that, huh? Be mad and then you let me go, and we never see each other again? You get over your shit, and what? Move on with some other dude?”

“No, Mick.”

“Really? Because it’s starting to get kind of fucking hard not to take this shit personally.”

Not to feel like he’s easy to cast aside. To give up on. To lose when the going gets tough, which he feels so deeply right now, but which a part of him remembers that he did once before too. That this might just be the tables, turned the fuck around.

They just look at each other, then. And Mickey is so sad, but he can tell Ian is too, and that’s why he shakes his head, the rest of it dissipating.

"Really, Ian?" he says. "We’re gonna do this again? Like you didn't just kiss me last night, like we aren't practically back together again?”

“They all say I’m like her.”

“So prove them fucking wrong.”

“I can’t,” Ian says. “They’re right. I’ve already done it.”

And Mickey knows then. That he could say a fucking thousand things right now, even those stupid three words, and that it wouldn't really matter. That Ian's always been stubborn and that sometimes there's nothing you can do to talk him out of it. And maybe, just maybe, that he's really fucking tired of fighting so hard for it.

"Okay then," he says. "Stay with Lip. Do whatever the fuck you want, okay?"

They look at each other again. And Mickey shakes his head.

"But maybe, while you're thinking, spend a little time considering how I'm still fucking here."

That sinks in on Ian's face. A moment, just a moment, which is all Mickey sees, because tonight he doesn't stick around to catch the rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehehe. oops. maybe i just love angst (or maybe we're leading up to some sort of resolution)
> 
> sorry about the ending lol but tell me what you thought of it all? by now you know that i always love hearing from you!


	9. 9 – Ian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which things cannot be forgotten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) do i even have to write it at this point? long time no see, but i guess that’s how i roll  
> 2) just a heads up, but ian thinks about cheating, the club, kash and his low self worth in this chapter. it’s not graphic, but beware of that if any of it’s a trigger to you  
> 3) other than that lol… enjoy!

He wakes up in Lip’s dorm room bed.

There’s light on the other side of his eyelids, painting the insides orange. He thinks it’s later than he usually sleeps, both because of that and because of the heavy-as-led feeling that sits deep in his bones.

Yesterday he watched Mickey’s back retreating away from him.

Actually, he did much more than that. He woke up in Mickey’s bed, he went to dinner, and he sat in a room with his mom who every other person in his family hates. He hated her too, for a moment, and then he stood on the pavement, telling Mickey he had to go.

Maybe he shouldn’t have done it. Maybe he’s a fucking idiot, or a fucking asshole, but the truth is that he also thinks he was right. He shouldn’t be sleeping in Mickey’s bed after what he did, so instead he turns around to his back on Lip’s.

His stirring changes the sounds of the room, Ian only noticing the tap, tap, tap of a keyboard when it stops. There’s a creek of a chair, and a sense that he’s being watched. When he opens his eyes, Lip’s looking at him.

Ian texted him yesterday, but only after he’d ridden around the L for a while, trying to forget it all. Or maybe toying with the ledge, the way he did before. He didn't want to do anything, not really, but as he rode around and a man at Addison looked at him, he remembered that six months ago he would have looked back.

Now he's here. In Lip's bedroom, as Lip tilts his head at him.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey."

To be honest, Ian feels a little embarrassed about the whole thing. He hates the attention, never one to have it as a middle child, and he hates the thought that he's someone to look out for now. Hates it because it's followed by shame; last time, at the hospital, him looking down. Lip offers a smile though, a grimace like maybe he gets it.

"Brought you breakfast," he says. An easy topic. "The coffee's pretty much cold brew by now, but there's a poptart and a banana."

"Thanks."

Ian sits up in the bed. The stuff's on the bedside table, so he takes a sip of the coffee, but Lip's right; it's cold, so he moves on to the poptart's silver packaging instead. Fiddles with it a little as he looks at his hands, wondering if he should speak.

"He talked to Fiona," Lip says, like maybe he gets that too.

Of course he did. He's too kind to Ian, always pushing everything aside to make sure he's okay. Forgetting about the fucking porn, or about all this other shit, just to sit by Ian's side in the car on the way from the station, holding his hand in his own. That's part of the problem, and part of the thing that makes Ian have to swallow his guilt.

"Okay."

"Made sure you actually got here." He nods. "You gonna talk to him?"

Shrugs. He probably should, but the probably hasn't helped much before.

"You gonna talk to her?"

His mom.

His beautiful, terrible mom, who they all say he's alike, and who's come back like a savior, and who everyone hates. Who reminds him of everything he's done, and who he's so angry at, and who he still loves, even if he might be the only one.

He shakes his head this time. Even if that's true, he's too mad now to speak.

"Okay," Lip says. "Well..."

Ian feels him hesitate. Looks up just quickly enough to catch the glimpse of him glancing at the clock, about ten to ten.

"You got class?" he says.

"Yeah, but–"

"Go."

"Really?" Lip says. Ian nods.

To be honest, he kind of just wants to be alone right now. To wallow in this fucking self-pity and to look at his phone, fearing and hoping that someone has called him. Mickey. Or maybe his mom.

"Alright," Lip says. But then he gets up with something from his desk and throws it on the duvet for Ian to look at. A key. "So you can get back in."

It's symbolic, and Ian thinks he knows what it means. _Sorry about before. I'm here this time_. So he takes it.

"Thanks," he says.

"You got this, right?"

He catches the reference. Nods and smiles just a little, before he lets Lip place his palm on the top of his head for a second. Then watches him go.

He's tired now. Bone-deep, and he wonders if that's a part of his brain being fucked too. The way he always feels things so damn intensely, especially when they're sadness. Or anger.

Fuck, the anger. When Monica said that things about the genes the day before, he just saw red.

He can't really explain it, because he's said it himself before: _Which is funny, because they all saw how alike we are_. And he's heard it before too, from everyone else: _You get that that's a full-on Monica move, right? She put us through hell. When they're manic, they can be destructive. You don’t have to be like her, you know?_

Maybe it's just that he was beginning to hope. Or maybe it's just that he's always been this way.

He said it to Lip once. That if he ever hit Frank, he'd fucking kill him. He showed it to Mickey once too, when he was beating up Ned; that if he really wanted to, all he'd need is one hit to take him to the ground.

That's a dangerous part of him. One that he tries to deny to himself, to quench, to keep quiet, because it scares the shit out of him. But it's there, and he remembers. The things he said to Mickey, so fucking cruel. The way he fought with Lip an entire summer once, so much anger beneath his skin it almost scorched it. The way Fiona asked about Mickey just a month ago, and he yelled in her face before he quit.

He's volatile. And maybe the feeling so deeply is another bipolar thing, but he thinks that this part might just be him.

Sensitive him. Terrified him. 

Him, who's a fucking runner too.

That's the other truth, right? The other one he really doesn't want to admit.

It was right what he said to Mickey. Whenever Monica's manic, she's nice to them. She tells Fiona to go running again, or buys Debbie dolls, or takes him out. She defends him against Frank, or protects him against Terry, and she holds onto his shoulders to tell him that he's loved.

The thing is, it's never really her being back that's the problem. It's the fact that when she's there she can be so convincing, and that it always hurts the same whenever she turns her back again. That the leaving taints all the staying in bullshit.

Doesn't that sound like him? Like him, running from Mickey's wedding to the army, and from them to his mom. From the MP's to his mom. From Mickey when he took Yevgeny, from Mickey when they broke up, and from Mickey again now. From Yevgeny who, for a moment, he almost saw as his own, and if that's true, how is he any fucking better than her?

Maybe he's not, and that's the thing. He might feel like he's spending his whole life trying to widen these gaps between her being back and leaving, and having Mickey and losing him. But the problem is that this time, the loss is his own damn fault.

*

He spends that day doing nothing.

Well. He looks at his phone, nothing from Mickey but a message from his mom which he clicks away. He lies in Lip's bed and thinks, he stares out the window at everyone here who's lives are so together, and he goes for a walk. He gets back on the L.

He can't remember the story, but he's heard Fiona tell it. That one time they were living in the van, alone for so long while he was really sick, and that eventually Fiona had to bring him to the hospital by herself. That he almost died from it. But although he should hold onto that, he remembers other things too.

The last time she came back to them all, and how much she focused on him. Calling her after Ned kicked him out, and coming to live with her. Sitting in the back of the van last time, wearing her pink scarf. Her blood, so terribly red, all over the kitchen floor.

The thing is, he can't sort this shit out. The anger, and the love, and the way he feels both at the same time. But eventually he stops trying and goes to Patsy's instead. To Fiona.

He's always been closer to Lip than her. When they were kids and he was still the youngest of them all, she was the one trying to take care of the practical shit, while Lip was the one who walked all night to bring him back his G.I. Joe. But the last time Monica came back to them all, Lip wasn't there.

He didn't see her make them lunches. He didn't see her buy Debbie dolls. He didn't see her rent the carpet cleaner, he didn't have a moment of almost believing in it, and he didn't see the blood.

But Fiona did. Actually, Fiona cleaned it up.

She’s working when he steps inside, talking to Sierra about something in the kitchen. Ian sees her when he comes in, and then she sees him.

“Hey sweetface,” she says, when she’s by his side. He smiles a little, as she reaches out to fix his hair. “What’s up? Want pie? The cherry’s fresh from the oven.”

“Okay,” he says.

"You okay?" He nods. "Alright, I'll go get it. Sit down."

She pats his cheek before he leaves. He watches her, and then he does as asked.

Last night, Lip updated him. Told him that he talked to Fiona, and that her and Liam are staying with Sean despite the way they fought the other day, to avoid getting in-between whatever's going on with him and Mickey. He appreciates it. But it's also another thing he finds a little embarrassing.

"Here," she says, when she's back again, placing the pie in front of him. There's a fork too, and a glass of coke, which he knows means she's trying a little too hard. She is trying though, and after she's placed the stuff in front of him, she sits down. 

“Having a good time with Lip?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

He pokes at his pie, and she looks at him.

"Wanna talk about it?"

He shrugs.

Really, he has the urge to just repeat what he did before. To be alone about it, trying so hard to ignore it until it goes away. But there's a reason why he's here, and a reason why he's with her.

He's been thinking about it lately. How the other day, when he got out of the shower, he found them sitting there and talking. How they visited him at the hospital together, or talked that morning with the bat, or how he found them in the kitchen on the night of that day, Mickey sitting at the table while she ironed Carl's old shirt.

She’s seen him in a way he hasn’t, and that’s what he thinks about now as he pokes his pie again.

"What was he like?" he asks. "When everything... happened?"

That's how he's started referring to it. She hesitates, looking like she's thinking, but then she shrugs.

"Worried," she says. He nods. "It was hard for him sometimes. Especially at the hospital, when you weren't really... responding."

That's a nice way to put it.

"And at the the military prison?"

“Worried too.”

“Not mad?”

“Not while I saw him, at least.”

Ian nods. And it's fine, it is, but then suddenly he has to look down, clenching against the lump in his throat.

It's hard for him. Really hard, to think of all of this; that he'll never, ever be able to be someone who gives Mickey peace. That Mickey will always be waiting for him to do his next crazy shit, just like Ian said on the porch that day. That he'll always be a source of distress, the way that Monica was for them.

It's true that Mickey's still here. It's true that he's so good, and that Ian should just be fucking grateful for it. Count his blessings, and hold on tight, and live in it for as long as he has, before he becomes too much. Go there now and beg to come home, and hope and pray to some God that the next time he loses his mind, it won't be as fucking bad. But he can't stop thinking that Mickey deserves so much better than that.

He doesn't say that, but Fiona reaches out for his hand. He lets her.

“He loves you,” she tries. Like she’s offering it, consolation, but it doesn’t work. He shrugs anyway.

“I love Mom. Doesn’t change who she is.”

“Look, Ian.” She’s serious. “I know I’ve said some shit, but… there has to be other options than what she is, right? Not everyone is like her.”

“Maybe,” he says. “I don’t know. You still said what you said.”

 _You still meant it_ , he thinks, because he knows that she did. _She put us through hell. I’m not saying you put us through hell, but… When they’re manic, they can be destructive._ That's what he thinks about all the time, not just because he can't seem to let her saying it go, but because deep down he also believes it to be true. Fiona exhales.

"I'm sorry, okay?" At least he thinks she means that too. "Look, what the fuck do I know? Only her, just like you, so really I'm on bare fucking ground as well."

She breathes.

"Is that why you went with her? You were mad at us?"

"I don't know. I thought maybe she’d understand.”

“And did she?”

Maybe. She told him that she loved him, and in that moment, that was all he needed to hear. Especially from her. But she said a lot of other shit too.

“I’m not sure.”

That’s the truth, he thinks. And even though it’s scathing, Fiona’s still holding his hand as she nods.

The thing is, Ian thinks he’s different from the rest of them. At least from Lip, who’s so wrapped up in Frank, getting obsessed with Karen and her baby just to prove he’s not like him. Drinking too much, even then, and yelling at Fiona whenever she fails just a little, because he can’t handle just the thought of neglect.

Ian’s not like that.

Fuck, Ian doesn’t give a shit about Frank, who could frankly die in a ditch tomorrow for all he really cares, because Frank has never given a shit about him. _Because you look the most like Mom_ , or that’s what Fiona said, which wasn’t a great consolation then when he was getting hit in the face, and definitely isn’t now, but which is probably true.

He forgives her when the others don’t. He longs so desperately for her. And he always really fucking hurts when she fails.

She’s his mom, that’s why. And that’s why he looks at Fiona now.

“Am I the only one who loves her?” he says. And Fiona exhales.

They’re probably both thinking of the same thing. Of standing there in the aftermath, her on the bed with Debbie and Carl and him in the doorway, the two of them sharing a look.

“Last time…” she says. “I don’t know, Ian. The kids were there. I had to clean it up.”

“She was sick. And the pills make you feel like that before they stabilize.”

Like life is not worth living. That’s what he said, and it’s true. No wonder they tell you to make a suicide list. 

“Okay. But she took all our money. She said I could trust her, and then…”

He nods. He understands that part; the abandonment.

“I don’t know what the right thing to say is,” Fiona says.

“I don’t know either.”

“I love you?” She offers it with a smile that speaks of trying, and he knows that she is. So he nods. “Eat your pie, okay?”

He smiles.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. But the truth is, as she squeezes his hand, he still feels alone

*

He just can't stop thinking of it.

Of running away in the van. Of calling her at the prison. Of living in the crack-house with her. 

The thing is, he didn't just get mad at her when he found out about the meth because that shit is dangerous or stupid or because she'd dragged him into it now. He got mad because he needed her to be different, then. Not Monica the hurricane, but Monica, his mom. Not the Monica who took him to a club and told him he was the bread and butter of the place. Who gave him a place to live after running away, and suggested he look for work there.

Who was there the first time he came home with money he shouldn’t have had, and didn’t ask where he got it from.

The other thing is, the past is starting to become something he doesn’t know how to escape.

He's always kind of done it. She comes back, and he's on the pavement on his way to Mickey's house even though they've barely started to fuck. She's depressed, and Mickey's in juvie, so he's on the pavement on the way to the club where he lets Ned pick him up. She's always gone, and he gets his first job, and Kash promises love.

It was different back then, though. He at least thought it was okay, but then–

The first guy touches his naked waist under the strobe lights. _If 25 bucks gets me a dance, then what do I get for 50?_ A different guy offers him 500 for the porn, and he talks him up to six. Someone’s eyes catch on him, and that’s all it takes, him in the bathroom of Patsy’s, or him outside the grocery store, or him in that parking lot with Yevgeny on the way to Florida.

A memory: The day that Mickey comes to get him. Him afterwards, angry and upset, and the guy he’s dancing with asking what his rate is. Offering him drugs, trying to take him home, and Ian so used to the rusty taste of indifferent self-destruction in his mouth that he lets it happen.

Another memory: The guy from the hotel with Mickey. _Do you like it rough? At least have the twink suck me off._

He doesn’t know why he did it, except maybe he does. He remembers being used to it. He remembers thinking it was what he was worth. He remembers something ripped way, all sense of safety gone, losing the person he fucking loves, and Mickey's psychopath dad. Bleeding edges, running away, mania, and his neck thrown back to swallow down the drugs.

And Monica didn’t stop it. Maybe he hates her for that.

In the end, he goes back to the club.

He just needs to look at it. To see it shed in daylight to understand it all. To watch it without the glistening go-go-go of his manic brain or the rain-muddled fog of his memories. To acknowledge it, maybe. Remember.

The side door’s heavy, but unlocked, and he uses his shoulder to push in. It’s daylight and they haven’t opened yet, but the employees have started trickling in to set it all up. In the beginning he went here sometimes while they did, just to get away from the wet fog that always seemed to hang around the crack-den. Now a bartender is setting up behind the bar, and it takes a moment before Ian places him as the guy who worked Tuesday’s and Friday’s while Ian worked here too.

He could go up to speak to him, but he won't. He turns around to look at the stages instead.

The whole thing’s different when no one’s there. It’s like the morning after a party, beer-bottles and confetti and Frank on the floor, the fun of it evaporated to leave behind the mess. Or maybe it’s like tissue-paper against blood on linoleum, a terrible thing that still has to be cleaned up. It’s uglier, anyway, but also less intense. Less like the blurry, drugged-out, flashy memories of his coke-addled, manic brain and more like a piece of construction made by the hands of some working class man. 

It barely feels like the same place, but he's not sure that's good. Instead it just reminds him how everything he thought was normal back then was probably fucking nuts. 

Like cheating on Mickey.

Another memory: Mickey kneeing that guy from the hotel in the nuts. Mickey yelling at someone who dared to proposition them. Mickey threatening one of the guys who's hand got a little too close. Mickey stopping the guy who would have taken a drugged-out Ian home.

Mickey on Terry's back, trying to stop his fists.

Here's another one: Them in the car back from the police station, his head on Mickey's shoulder as they rode to the hospital, so tired and so sad. Him looking at Mickey before he signed his name, and crying into his neck as Mickey held him. Him telling everyone in there that Mickey was waiting for him.

Everything that happened here makes him such a terrible person. And maybe that's why he ends up outside of Monica's place.

Of course he does. It’s a pattern now, whenever he’s running away. She knows it, or maybe she doesn’t, but there she is anyway, in the doorway with her blonde hair.

At first she’s surprised, he can tell. And then, slowly, she smiles.

“Hey baby,” she says. “Come in.”

*

The apartment's the same as before, but it looks different now when it's just the two of them. Smaller, he thinks. Cozier. Warmer than before.

She makes him food; dinner. Just pasta with store-bought sauce, but he'll take it. She combs through his hair. She sits and she smiles at him.

The thing is that even as he's mad at her, he doesn't hate her completely. Instead he hates the rest of them saying he's like her, not just because he doesn't want to be, but because to him she's more than whatever the rest of them think. Because it's hard to think there's a line that he could tip too far over, and then never be thought of as forgivable again.

Because she came when he needed her too. Twice.

He lets her dote on him now. Lets her like he did last time, her pink scarf around his neck, and the dog she loved, and all the food she bought for them. With meth-money, but still. It counted for him.

As they eat, she sits in front of him.

"Where have you been?" he asks. If they talked about it last night, he didn't get to hear it.

"With Walter. Here and there."

He nods. He could throw it in her face, the things she'd said back then. How she was finally happy now, or how he was good to her, but he doesn't. He couldn't. 

"I swear he gave me the meth to take to you guys." That doesn’t really mean much from her, but he nods again anyway. “But tell me what you've been doing? You never called me back.”

“Sorry,” he says, but she shrugs it away. Another trait of hers: Generous in that way. “I’ve signed up to become an EMT.”

He doesn’t know why he tells her, except he wants her to know. She smiles, big like a kid would, like she likes it.

“Yeah? You’ll be kickass at it.”

He smiles. But then he sort of wants to cry.

He feels it whenever she's here. The way that deep inside, he's still just a kid so desperate for his mom who's never fucking there, longing to be held and loved like any kid would. Longing to be told he's okay. Worthy. Good enough.

"I broke up with Mickey," he says now. "When I came back."

"The boyfriend? But he was here at the dinner?"

"We were getting back together."

"Were?"

"Yeah, Mom." Because of her, but she doesn’t react, and maybe that’s what spurs him on. Makes him angry again, or upset. “You said I should just forget about him."

"I did?"

He shakes his head. Of course she would ask that. Of course it didn't actually mean that much to her, even if to him it mattered more than anything. Of course she was reckless, even with this. And of course he still did what he thought she said he should do.

Of course she only smiles, and reaches out for him.

"Well, what do we have to do to get him back then, huh?"

It's such a her thing to say. Such a her thing, and for a moment he wants to smile, to laugh, to think it's all okay. But it's not.

"You never even asked where the money came from," he says.

That's the biggest thing, right? The thing that out of all of them, he's just not sure how to forgive. That she always leaves, and that even when she was back, she didn't give a fuck. 

"What?"

"At the club, Mom. You just let me do that shit, like it didn't even matter. Like you didn't care, but maybe that's true, because if you really did, you would have learned to stick around, right?"

"Ian," she says.

"And maybe if you did, I wouldn't have gotten into half the shit I did." With Kash. With Ned, the club. "But you haven't. Instead you keep coming back and tell us that you love us, and then you leave again, and meanwhile I'm here and I can't fucking forget it."

They look at each other now. And he’s mad, so mad, but really he’s just a boy who’s looking at his mom. The both of them teary-eyed.

The thing is, he's not sure he really deserves love.

It’s never happened anyway, not before Mickey. Frank fucking hates him. Monica might love him, but she’s never fucking there, and Kash said he did, but Ian knows now. It's easy to lie to a boy if you want something from him. Even Mickey had his moments, standing there and saying he was nothing but a warm mouth, and the men and the money only confirmed what he already knew. And now this fucking label too.

If everyone hates the person who gave him his fucked up genes, then how could anyone love him? And if no one can love him, then maybe he deserves all the things he’s done to himself.

Now he shakes his head.

"I can't do this," he says, and for the second time in two days the chair screeches across the floor as he walks out.

The thing is, he just wants to be good. That's everything he's ever wanted. To do something for a living that could help other people. To keep quiet and get a job so Fiona would be less stressed. To be a good brother to his siblings. To protect Yevgeny from the world. 

To make Mickey happy. That's the biggest one.

Maybe he shouldn’t do it. Maybe it’s the most fucking unfair thing he’s ever done, but he knows where he’s going before he even walks outside.

The door is so familiar. He walked through with a crowbar once, and now he knocks on it with his heart in his throat. 

When Mickey opens it, he’s so beautiful. Tired, clearly, and probably sad, but him; and that's enough.

All Ian really wants is to be with him. Even when he was sixteen, and Mickey was the guy who he couldn't stop smiling about in the days after getting back the gun, that's all he wanted. Even when Mickey was the guy on the other side of the juvie glass, telling him not to touch it and only making Ian smile.

It's such a simple thing, really. To want to him around. And if there's anything Ian wants to learn, it's how to untangle that from all this mess.

"Hi," he says. It's small, and as Mickey takes him in for a moment, frowning and skeptical, he wonders if he fucked it up too much this time. If maybe Mickey will turn him away. But instead, after a couple long moments, he sighs.

"Hey."

It feels like last time. Ian on the porch, trying with all his might which is all he knows how to do. And Mickey on the porch, too kind.

"I'm sorry," Ian says this time. And just like forever ago, it takes a moment. But then Mickey nods.

"Been with Lip?" he says.

"And Fiona." He waits a moment. "My mom."

If Mickey's surprised he doesn't show it, but he's probably not. Ian is so predictable these days.

"I thought you were mad at her?"

"Yeah. I don't know."

He is, and yet she's still his mom. Mickey nods like maybe there's a part of him that understands, and that only makes Ian feel much worse. 

"How was it then?"

He shrugs. Remembers the fighting and all he thought and tilts his head, sad.

"I don't want to be like her," he says. His biggest fucking truth. He doesn't want to be someone who touches people and causes them pain.

"Then don't, Ian," Mickey says. "Look, I know that there's some shit going on that I don't understand, but you just need to stick around. As for the rest, we'll deal with it, okay? Sickness, health, I meant that shit."

"I went back to the club."

He just needs to say it, he thinks. He just needs Mickey to know, which is why he looks at him now, as Mickey looks back.

He probably knows already. That's what he said last night anyway; that he was there on the day that Ian brought the money home. That he has some fucking idea. And maybe that's why he looks at him now, and breathes out.

"You cheat on me, right?"

He says it like he knows the answer already. But Ian still has to nod.

There it is, the thing he can't seem to forget. And there it is, the bitter taste: Hurricane Ian with rose-thorn hands, palms spilling over with blood. And there he is: Motherless boy who you only have to lie to to touch.

The thing is, he doesn't just have to look away because it was cheating. He also has to because if he didn't – if he stared it all in the face and allowed it all to settle in, the club and the drugs and Kash and his mom – he doesn't know how he'd live with it. He doesn't know how he could ever look himself in the eyes again.

"For money?" Mickey asks.

And that's when he starts to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah we’re sad again but we’re moving on up!
> 
> 1) sorry mickey’s barely in this lol but we’ll see him soon <3  
> 2) none of this reflects my opinion about monica or is intended as an objective judgment of her, it’s just meant to explore ian’s feelings about her in a way that matches how i feel like they’re portrayed on the show  
> 3) as always i love it when you leave your wonderful comments, and would love to hear from you!


	10. 10 – Mickey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which they finally talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) i don’t have a calendar sorry i don’t know what you’re talking about. three weeks? that doesn't mean anything to me (it’s just that i started uni again and life's been busy bc of that)  
> 2) just like the last chapter, there’s some stuff about the club, cheating, and sexual trauma in this. still not graphic but be mindful anyway!  
> 3) they’re finally really talking in this, so i hope you’re gonna like it! as always, enjoy your reading

The first person who ever cries to him is Mandy.

It probably happens while they’re babies too, but that’s not what he remembers now. Instead he’s six and she’s five and everyone’s baby, Terry and Laura are fighting, and the two of them hide in Iggy’s room where suddenly the tears come. He doesn’t really know what to do, still just a kid himself, but he looks at her, then at Iggy, and then he touches her hand. After the fighting has died down, he gets her something to drink.

Later she's a teen and crying about boys pretty much every day, and to be honest he thinks she's silly, but he'll protect her anyway. He takes pride in it actually, roaming around the neighborhood with anything for a weapon, ready to beat down anyone who breathes a wrong word at her. Lip, that one time. And Ian, before he became who he is to Mickey now.

After that, it's different though. Then Ian is sick, and she’s hurt, and he brings her, bloody and mangled, to sleep at the Gallagher house. He lies awake on Ian’s floor. He walks to the bathroom and stops because of the sound. He stands outside of the screen door and listens to her cry.

You don’t share this stuff in his family, and he’d never breathe a word to anyone, but he remembers how it felt. This striking feeling, overcoming, of not being able to help.

Now it’s Ian’s turn. Ian, who stands there on his porch with big, sorry eyes, and whose face contorts suddenly at the question. Who cries.

Mickey’s never seen it before. Not like this, face hidden behind his hand and big gulps in and out, so sincerely devastated that Mickey does the only thing he knows how to do. Moves in and puts his arms around him.

It reminds him of the hospital. Of the way they’d both cried then, desperately holding on, just two boys trying to stop the drowning in each other’s arms. Of the way Ian had put his face in Mickey's neck then, and the way he does it now, hiding there like he's still that boy. Of the way he'd held onto the back of Ian's head.

“It’s okay, Ian,” he says. The same thing he said to Mandy that time when he was six. “It’s gonna be okay.”

But Ian shakes his head.

“Yeah, it will,” Mickey says. “Just breathe, okay?”

He knows to say that only because it’s what his mom used to do, but it works. For a moment Ian pauses all his crying to inhale, and the thought of that is sweet enough to make Mickey smile.

“Come inside,” he says then. “I think we need to talk.”

*

The moment he walks away from Ian that night, he’s honestly fucking mad.

Really fucking mad. Mad in this way he’s not used to being with Ian, even with all the things that have happened these last few months. In a way that plays the whole thing over on repeat: Ian breaking up with him, and Ian doing this now, and Ian fucking other guys behind his back. Ian calling him a coward once. Ian saying he doesn’t owe him anything, like this is about debt.

He goes home then; Angry. He slams the door, and he’s all alone, and he grabs a beer and downs it and then he grabs another one.

Fuck.

He feels the same way he did when he learned of what Ian had done. When that stupid guy at that stupid club grinned and said he’d gone home with someone else, then dared to hit on Mickey like he’d ever hold an eye to an eye against Ian like that.

He feels like shooting up a shop. Like goading Lip again. Like sitting at home all night, angry and waiting for Ian to come home so he could confront him, only to learn that what Ian had really been doing was even more nuts.

Truth be told, he hasn’t been thinking that much about it. He’s been go, go, go all this time instead, just trying to help Ian be okay and maybe to get him back, but now he thinks of it. Not just the things that’s been done to him, but the things that have happened.

How are they supposed to deal with this? Ian’s mom and Ian’s illness and Mickey in prison and fuck, all this shit that just keeps piling up. And how are they supposed to deal with this? The men who have touched Ian, the cheating Ian did, the porn and the fucking drugs.

There’s something he remembers.

Running around that day with Ian, after the whole thing with Ned. The afternoon so sunny, the breath hard in his throat, Ian’s tongue out of his mouth as the sweat dripped and they ran. His laughter and then the way they play-fought up against the wall, the sound of unbuckling belts.

He’d been so happy then. Had felt like he could honestly take on the world, because he’d let his guard down, and Ian had chosen him, and everything had been so clear.

Now he remembers other things too. How old the pervert was, and how he’d bought Ian drinks. How old Kash was, and how young Ian looked back when Kash shot his leg. The guy from the night Mickey found him, trying to take Ian home.

He was too young in the beginning, he thinks, to really understand. But he’s older these days, and maybe that’s why he’s here with Ian now, thinking of how he didn't cry until Mickey asked him about being paid.

He's sitting on the couch. Looking around the room as Mickey gets him a glass of water, then comes back over with it.

“Thanks,” he says, as he takes it. He’s quiet, and so is the room, but Mickey sits down by his side anyway, as Ian looks at his hands.

Mickey thinks they love each other. That’s why they’re here, trying so hard, and why this quiet between them now feels like the calm before the reckoning.

It’s only been a year and a half.

He's thought of that before, in the summer when he was counting the days like lucky, sea-worn pearls, so aware of the way he’d been drowning just the year before. So amazed that he could have this: Ian by his side in his bed every day, when just twelve months before he’d stood on that gravel, unable to even let himself be touched.

Maybe it’s not about that now. But maybe some of it is, like Ian sitting on the couch, looking at the baby’s chair.

“How’s he doing?” he asks, like has so many times before. A question other than the one they really need to talk about, maybe just to ease each other in.

“Fine,” Mickey says. “Svetlana thinks he’ll stand soon.”

“Yeah?” Mickey just shrugs. There’s warmth in Ian’s tone, and Mickey does understand. He doesn’t know. It’s difficult. “He’s getting old.”

“I guess.”

But he is, and that’s strange because it means he’s changing too. Becoming something other than a lump of baby meat. 

It’s hard for Mickey to talk about. Hard, but not a tangent, too intertwined with all of this to have nothing to do with it. The marriage, and Ian running away, and everything that might just go back to that day.

“Why did you go back?” he asks. To the club. Ian still looks at him, but he swallows.

“I wanted to see it. I don’t know, I just…”

He shrugs. Quiet, and Mickey can hear both their breaths.

“It all seems mad now.”

“Working there?” Mickey asks.

“Yeah.” Ian nods. “And…”

He breaks off like he can’t get it out. Like he doesn’t want to look at it, and Mickey doesn’t either, especially not when Ian’s face twists and he looks down like he’s trying not to restart the crying again. Mickey remembers anyway. Pills, cheating, money.

“It was worse before you came.”

That’s what he's feared.

He’ll never forget that first night. Ian throwing his head back for the pill to be placed on his tongue, or being told he was living in a crack-den with his mom. The fucking pervert prick who tried to take him home, and the guilt that maybe wasn't his to feel, but he felt.

“Why?” he asks now. Ian’s looking down at his hands.

“After the army, I just…”

He breaks off again. Breathes out, so shaky Mickey can hear it, but then retries.

“I guess I just felt kind of bad,” he says.

Yeah. Mickey guesses he just felt kind of bad too, there in his bathroom breaking the mirror with his fist, while Ian was off selling himself. Because after the army is not really about the army at all, he thinks, but about the thing that happened that made Ian run away.

“And I guess it just felt familiar. Gifts and money are similar, right?”

Fuck, Mickey thinks. Fuck that pervert prick Ian’s talking about now. Fuck the both of them, geriatric dickheads, and fuck the guys at the club who tried to do the same thing.

“Should have shot him back,” he says.

“You’ve never actually done that.”

“Ian–”

“Can we not get into it?”

It’s a pleading. Big eyes, and it makes Mickey nod, because the truth is he understands. It’s hard to admit this stuff to yourself. Easier to pretend that what happened was okay. That you decided it yourself, or that it’s not too different from something you’ve done before on your own. That if you don’t acknowledge it, it won’t feel so bad.

Mickey knows that all too well.

The thing is, everything feels like it stopped and started on that day. Maybe that’s what trauma does, if that’s what it’s fucking called. Hits like a slam of lightning, breaking up your life into after and before.

It ruined so many things. His whole fucking life, forcing him into this shit with Svetlana and the kid. And it took this from him, the only fucking thing that gave him any hope.

Now he looks at Ian.

“You think it’s because of what happened?”

Here, he means. That day. 

“It’s genetic, Mick,” Ian says.

“It’s not genetic doing so many drugs that I find you shaking out of your fucking skin. Or running away in the first place.”

Actually, it feels like a pretty clear A to fucking B. This terrible thing happens, and the next time Mickey finds him, he’s lying in the snow outside of a club where everyone preys on him. Maybe Ian’s thought the same. He looks at him anyway, a while, and then with his eyes still red-rimmed, he shrugs. 

Fuck, that feels like shit. Fuck, and Mickey breathes out, hand across his face. 

“I’m so sorry, Mickey. I–”

But Ian breaks off too, this thing too difficult to really say with words. But he looks at him, still, and then their eyes meet.

It feels like Mickey’s shit sometimes. Like something he wants to guard, the pain of it so fucking insurmountable that he thinks not even Ian could understand. But other times it’s different, and he thinks of it like this: Ian was there too. And maybe there's some healing potential in that.

“You ever think about it?” he asks now.

“Yeah. All the time,” Ian says.

“We never talked about it.”

Ian tried once, but he doesn’t mention that. Ian doesn’t either.

“I thought you didn’t want to.”

“I don’t.”

Ian smiles. Only a little bit, and only like he understands, and that makes Mickey smile a little bit too.

They’re something of a pair, now he really thinks of it. Him with this, and Ian with his own sexual shit, the things that have happened to them an unclimbable wall that sometimes he thinks they will never get past. But other times it’s different.

They’re called survivors, right? The people who survive this shit? And lately that’s beginning to feel pretty fucking apt.

“What a bunch of bullshit, huh?” he finally says. Because fuck, maybe the only way to get past is to get through, and because he’s so fucking over being sad all the time. It makes Ian smile a little again, and then they look at each other, a long moment before they both lean in.

Their second hug of the night. But this time it’s different, Ian’s arms around him so fucking tight, stronger and bigger than Mickey’s ever been. Not like the guy at the hospital, so damn small. Like the one in Mickey’s bed who made him laugh before he wrestled him down.

When they pull apart they look at each other. Mickey thumb caresses over Ian’s cheek, and Ian smiles under it, tired and sad but warm. And then they take their hands back.

“The cheating?” Mickey says. The question that needs to be asked, which he thinks Ian understands. 

“I don’t really know. I know that’s a stupid answer, but…”

Ian shrugs to himself again.

"I swear I wasn't unhappy, Mick. I wanted to live there with you, I wanted to get us money, I didn't want to blow it up. Sometimes we'd fuck and you'd go to sleep, and I'd have these dreams about you and me and Yevgeny and forever, you know? But then I'd be out and someone would look at me and I'd just..."

He looks down again.

“Do it.”

Like an accident. Except not at all.

Mickey imagines it, the way he did that night when he thought he found out. Repeat images of Ian with some other fuck, hands on his dick in a backroom while Mickey was waiting around at home. The images as clear as they were that day, but tinted with a new kind of anger too; not just at Ian but at all those fucks as well, Ian's body something you could just come and take. The same way it's probably been since he was fucking fifteen.

“The same guy?” he asks now.

“Never,” Ian says. “Never someone I knew, just…”

Random fucking strangers. Mickey nods and breathes out, palm across his face again, as Ian keeps looking at him. Waiting.

“You fuck ‘em?”

Ian shakes his head again. Mickey tries not to let the strength of his relief show.

“Or…” Ian says then. “Only with… the porn.”

Fuck, that stupid porn. The one that tipped Mickey off to what was really going on. The one he still has the money from, save in his bedside drawer, never to be used by him over his dead fucking body. The one that collapsed it all, Ian in the psych ward just twenty-four hours later.

“I still have your money,” he says.

“Not mine. I made it for us.”

 _You said we needed the money._ That’s what he said when he came back, and Mickey still remembers. How fucking terrified the thought of that made him, because he knew it meant something was really, really wrong.

“You said so.”

“You believe me?”

“Hard not to, man. We’d fucked five times before you made sure I had money in my commissary account, and then you got me a job.” Ian smiles again. “You love that shit. Fuck, you filled this place to the ceiling with those stupid suitcases just to make an extra buck.”

“I thought I was onto something.”

“Yeah. Onto giving me a whole bunch of shit to clean.”

This time they both smile. Fuck, they actually chuckle, and the thought of that fills Mickey’s chest with so much damn relief. Maybe Ian’s too, because he shines for a moment, but then he tilts his head. Mellows again.

“Mick,” he says. “You should hate me.”

“Don't tell me what to feel.”

But Ian shakes his head.

“No, you should be mad."

“Okay then, maybe I should be. You’ve been kind of a dick.” That makes Ian look at him, eyes like he's surprised, which is funny because it's not like Mickey hasn't told him before. “And I was, either way. Lip didn’t tell you?”

“What?”

“The night when I thought you were off with some queen while you did that porn, I beat up the guy who told me, and then I took your pussy-ass brother along with mine to shoot up that new yuppie coffee shop.”

Ian looks on, incredulous. 

“That was you?”

“Fuck yeah. Fucking deserved it anyway, gentrifying assholes. And I thought you deserved it too, except then we found out you were sick, and now you’re crying my shirt all wet, so I can’t see how it makes sense for me to hold that shit against you.”

“It was still me, Mickey.”

That makes Mickey sigh. Exasperated, to be honest, a little over having this discussion once again.

“You _want_ me to walk away from you?”

“ _No_ ,” Ian says. “No, Mick, I just…”

He looks almost pleading. Those stupid big eyes he’s always worn that makes Mickey do fucking anything, and that makes him look back and face him now.

“I just want to give you peace, Mick.”

He says that like it’s a big truth. Like it's something he's said before: _I don’t want you sitting around worrying, watching me, waiting for me to do my next crazy shit._ But Mickey shakes his head.

“You don’t think freedom’s peace?”

Ian doesn’t speak.

“Look, Ian,” he says. “You gave me a way out, right?”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Fuck you, man, I don’t mean that. I’m not here because of debt. I’m here because I meant it, I’m free when I’m with you.”

From what he thought he had to be. From all this fucking pain. Fuck, from all the ways he thought he'd never be himself.

Everything did change that day they first fucked. Everything changed because Mickey got a glimpse of something, a freckled, silly boy who looked at him as if he hung the stars in the sky. Who didn’t give a fuck that he was always dirty or had holes in his socks, and who listened to his grumbles and just fucking smiled.

Mickey thought he could be something then, because of him. Something other than his dad’s miserable understudy, ready for a career of scamming, and beating up shit, and getting in and out of the joint for the rest of his life. Something that maybe one day could run free.

It got taken from him for a while. Got buried under a marriage and the constant bile in his throat, and that’s a part of the reason why he clings on now. Because getting Ian back was the only thing to restart the part of him that still had hope.

He doesn’t think that’s debt. He thinks it’s fucking love.

“Look," he says now. "Of course I was fucking pissed at you. I’ll be fucking pissed if you ever pull that shit on me again, so you better not, dickhead. This bullshit isn't gonna fly on take two, you hear me?”

That makes Ian smile.

“But fuck, Ian,” he says then. “You and me, we’ve got something really fucking good, and I want to be in it. And if you actually don’t want to be with me, then I don’t know what the hell we’re even doing here. But I don't think that's how you feel.”

A question, at least a little bit, although deep down he thinks – hopes – that he already knows. Still, he looks at Ian, awaiting his response. And Ian shakes his head.

Thank fucking God. Thank more than God, Mickey thinks with relief, smile making its way back onto his face as he shakes his head too.

“So what the fuck, man, let's just move on. It’s not like I’ve never fucked around on you too, anyway.”

That makes Ian frown, as if he didn't expect it. 

"What?" he says.

"With Angie, right?"

He scoffs, confusion letting up. 

"That doesn't count, Mick. We weren't even together."

"Bullshit we weren't together. I fucking kissed you after that."

"Yeah, _after_ that. Like you would have just accepted it if I told you you were my boyfriend."

"Okay, whatever," Mickey says, making Ian smile like he does when he thinks he's right. "Last time when you ran away with your mom then." 

"What?"

This time there's real surprise. 

"You slept with someone?" Ian says.

"Some chick at first, yeah." And the kicker: "Then some dude."

Ian's brows raise. Fuck, his eyes widen, and it could go either way, maybe into anger, but instead Mickey watches it as his expression slowly morphs, and there's a twitch towards the sky at the corner of his mouth. 

"Yeah?" he says. 

“Yeah. Turns out I’m not just gay for you.”

And then Ian laughs.

Fuck, Ian really laughs, and anyone else would probably think they’re fucking nuts, but Mickey smiles too, unable to contain it, and then they’re just sitting there, happy in the middle of all this stupid shit.

“Fuck you, man,” Mickey says, but Ian only laughs more.

“Sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t really look it. Fuck it, though. Mickey doesn’t really want him to be. "But I could have told you that, you know."

“Dick,” Mickey says, but it only makes Ian's laugh turn into a warm smile. Fond too, and familiar, something about cold air and booze from a hip flask.

They’ve gotten so far, Mickey thinks. _He’s_ gotten so far, even with all the shit that's been happening in-between. Has gone from this fucking terrified kid and turned into this, a guy who sits in the living room where his dad’s terror used to reign, and laughs with the boy he used to think he could never admit he loved. Who tells him that he’s gay. Just like the day with the gravel, but this time there’s no blood.

He wants to be happy now. Fuck, he’s wanted to be happy since the first time they banged and he dared to come back. Since he got out of juvie and spent the whole day and night with Ian, and since he did the same thing the next year. Since he went to find him again, and then took his chance to run away from the nightmare house and onto Ian’s floor. Then into his bed.

He’s wanted to be happy since he came out. Since he stuck by Ian’s side until he started laughing again. Since the first time he kissed him, smell of the van, and dared to reach for something.

Now Ian’s looking at him. And then he tilts his head, smile still warm.

“I love you, Mick,” he says. The first time he’s ever said it, but not the first time Mickey’s known. Fuck, what else could all this possibly mean?

“Yeah, no shit," Mickey says. "Figured I wouldn’t have your snot all over my shirt if you didn’t.”

And then Ian laughs again.

Fuck, the thing is, it’s true what Mickey said before. Back when they were kids, he used to look at Ian’s shiny eyes and bright smile, and think he was so damn naive. Sometimes he even got mad at it, those times when Ian thought they could fix it all with love. But now he thinks maybe Ian's hope was a gift.

He opens his arm then. He nods, and Ian leans in, and then he leans down to press a kiss to the top of his head. Lips to all that flame.

“Just stop pulling shit on me, okay Ian?” he says. “‘Cause I’m getting kind of tired of playing hide and fucking seek. And as for the rest of it, fuck. I’m pretty sure your mom’s not a glowing example of how to treat this shit right. Princess Leia seems to be doing pretty alright, at least.”

“You know about that?” Ian says.

“Everyone knows about that.”

“Mm-hm. And what else?”

“Fuck if I know, man. You go to school, right? You take your meds, we figure it out. We go to a fucking clinic to get you tested for that porn shit, so I don’t have to splash out on condoms every day.”

Ian scoffs again, but there's fondness underneath.

“As if you’ve ever paid for a condom in your life.”

“Well fuck man, it’s not my dick who has to wear the hat.”

“Asshole,” Ian says, but the grin is still so big. And then they’re there, smiling in this quiet, calm room.

There are other things to figure out. Practical shit, for one, like where they’re gonna live, and how they’ll get money, and what Ian’s going to do about his mom. And then there’s the rest of it: How to keep surviving with all this shit behind them, Ian and his mom and his illness and the guys who took advantage, and Mickey and the shit that his dad did to him. But right now there's this: The two of them with their arms around each other again.

"Gonna stay here tonight?" Mickey asks.

"Well, I don't have a house, so..."

He's joking, and Mickey smiles too.

"We sell that meth, you could buy it back."

"Not a damn chance, Mick."

That's not a surprising answer. Not that Mickey really thinks he needs protection, thank you very much, but the thought that Ian wants to give it to him is still sweet. He's always been like that, worried about him getting caught by guards or probation officers, as if the system isn't rigged against him anyway. 

"Whatever, tough guy. Guess you have to sleep here then."

"Yeah, I guess I do."

And then they look at each other. Warmth in their eyes as they meet, and smiles on their lips, and this sense that they're in this together. Back, and so happy, giddy like those teens on this couch on the night he thinks was a date. Looking at each other's lips.

Really, they kissed just the other day. And maybe that's why, now, Mickey simply tilts his head.

"So what's it gonna be, Clifford?" he says. And Ian leans in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay asdfgh. this is a big one, so i’d love to know what you thought! it always makes me so happy to hear from you! 
> 
> also it's been a while since i plugged my tumblr, but in case you've missed it, you can also come chat to me on it [here](https://himick.tumblr.com)


	11. 11 – Ian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it rains (and everything is rinsed clean)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay hi i’m still alive, what a surprise. first of all, sorry for taking so long to respond to your comments last time, they really do mean everything to me and i read them, i just got so busy with uni that emotionally i couldn’t look at this for like a month sdfgh. but i’m BACK and i think we’ll move a little quicker towards the end, bc the next chapter is basically just an epilogue so…. strap yourself in bc this is a long one and enjoy!

When he wakes up in Mickey's bed, it's raining. 

It's the first thing he hears, before he starts to register anything else; drops against the window with Chicago speed, daylight in the room still gray. It makes him smile, and then he notices the rest: Him in the bed, the warmth under the covers. And Mickey.

He's slotted up against him, like he's been so many times. Arms around his waist, sleep-deep breath making Mickey's chest rise and fall, obvious that he's still far gone. Ian can smell him, so warm and so himself, and that makes him smile too.

Yesterday was rough. Really fucking rough, the whole thing spilling out like lava over ground. But ashes are where things grow, and Mickey treated him so well, so Ian drops his forehead to his neck and breathes him in.

He loves him. Really does, because he's good and because he tries so fucking hard for the people he loves, _can I go in with him_ and button-up shirts. Because he's a grumpy shithead who makes Ian laugh, and because when they were kids and their little league coach upset him, he was so dramatic that he pissed on the field. Because you don't even have to look that close to see the emotions in him, wild and expansive and only just breaking beyond the carefully crafted surface when he feels safe enough.

It's not that he ever stopped. Fuck, he doesn't think he ever could, more that trying to would be like cutting off a limb. But for so long everything else was too fucking hard, depression and apocalypse genes and the grief on Mickey's face. But that's better now too.

He thinks of that as he lies there, Mickey still fast asleep. Mickey's soft skin beneath his own, and hair a little longer at the back like he needs to get it cut. Ten minutes, twelve of that. Then he turns to find his phone. 

It's only seven forty when the screen lights up in blue, so it makes sense for Mickey to still be far gone. And yet, it shows him a missed call from thirty minutes ago, Fiona, but with a text too: _House news, not urgent though. Call me back when you can._

He texted Lip yesterday, so they know that he's with Mickey. Maybe that's why he's happy about the text, him involved in their family business with the footing of someone who's more than just sick. Someone who gets to have a say, which is why he extracts his arm from Mickey, careful not to disturb him, and calls her back.

"Hey you," she says on the other end of the line when she picks up.

"Hey," he whispers back. "Mickey's sleeping so I'm being quiet."

"You with him right now?"

"Yeah," he says. "I just woke up."

In his bed. Their bed really, or so it used to be, and the thought of that makes him smile as he looks at Mickey again. Still asleep, or so it seems, but then again Ian used to be able to walk around and rattle their drawers for ages before he even stirred. 

"Well," Fiona says. "I'll be quick then. We're gonna buy back the house."

" _What_?" Ian says. "You're taking the meth?"

"Fuck no. Something better," she says.

"A loan?" he asks. That's what they tried at first anyway, and maybe it could still go through, but Fiona snorts.

"No again. With money from Carl."

"The _drug_ _money_?"

"I think it's guns."

Ian scoffs, incredulous. Fuck, he never thought he'd see the day where Fiona would accept that money from him, too adamant not to support their little brother's delinquent ways. But maybe it is better than meth, or maybe it's simply that in hard times you can't be that picky. Isn't the saying that they call for desperate measures, anyway?

"Well alright then," Ian says, on a shrug. He didn't really mind where the money came from before, but maybe that's just because he's assisted both Lip and Mickey's scamming one too many times to have a fully developed conscience against the criminal shit. Fuck, Mickey's still doing it now, and Ian doubts he's gonna be able to talk him out of it. But he never liked the juvie stuff, or that Carl seemed to sometimes be in over his head, so he can't help but ask. "He okay?"

"Carl?" Fiona asks. "Yeah, he wants to get out of it."

"Really?"

"Yeah," she says. 

"Well, thank fuck."

She chuckles. Relief in her tone too, Ian can hear it, and fuck he thinks she's been trying so hard with the worrying about them. Carl, for one, and Debbie pregnant and keeping it, and Ian sick and depressed and angry and probably not very easy to be around. 

"You're telling me," she says, and Ian smiles. "Fuck, I was losing my mind. With the wound on his head?"

"Yeah," Ian says. "But you're doing okay, you know?"

She scoffs.

"Sure," she says, like she only halfway believes it, but Ian gets that. They're alike in that way too, he thinks, remembering a time on the Gallagher couch when she told him she liked feeling like she was needed, and remembering what happened when that stopped. Robbie and shit, which Ian understands. It's not always easy to feel worthy of things. "Anyway. You gonna need a bed at the house, or what?"

The question comes unexpected. It sparks something warm in him though, fragile and tender as he looks back down at Mickey again.

This was his house for a while. He lived here, and he wanted it, dreaming of white rooms and babies and him and Mickey forever. Worrying about money for the two of them, or maybe the four, and thinking it was everything. This life they'd built together, so high before it crashed.

He thinks it kind of broke his heart. To lose what had felt so good, and to do it by his own hands, stained with the blood of everything he ever dared to dream about. But maybe, he's starting to think, he could get it back again.

"I don't know," he says; honest. "Not just for me if I do, I think."

Not without Mickey, lying there besides him now, so warm and so good. Or at least that's what he hopes.

Fiona smiles. He can hear it in her voice when she speaks.

"So you figured it out, then?" she says.

"Fuck, I don't know. We started to."

"Well, that's something, right?" she says. And he has to admit that it is.

The thing is, maybe it's right that this is what they do as Gallaghers. He's seen it many times with Lip and Fiona anyway, the two of them getting into relationships that crash and burn by their own or the other person's hands. That are bad for them, or that they're bad for, or that just don't work out because their baggage has been filled with so much shit it's hard to get it right. But Mickey's never been wrong, and the relationship hasn't either. Instead they've been dealt a shitty fucking hand by everyone else, and Ian has tried to sabotage it to escape the guilt, but he wants that all to be over now.

"Yeah, it's something," he says.

A start. At least that's what he's thinking when eventually the two of them hang up, and he looks at Mickey again, shrouded beautifully in morning-rain gray. And then as he lies back down, arm around him. And Mickey awake.

"You talking about me?"

Him voice, unexpected enough to make Ian jump for a second before he grins. 

"Fuck," he says, shoving him a little. "I thought you were sleeping. You're an eavesdropper now?"

"You're the one who's yapping on the phone from fucking bed."

That comes out like it's meant to be grumpy, but it's not. Instead there's a smile in his voice, and then it's on his face, as he turns around in Ian's arms to face him. Ian feels his own chest bloom with it, warm and fond and maybe a little embarrassing.

"Sorry," he says, except that it's not really true. "That was Fi on the phone. We're gonna buy back the house."

"Really?" Mickey says. "So you are gonna sell the meth?"

"Nope, we're using money from Carl. Or Carl's guns."

"Right." Mickey's clearly unimpressed, which only makes Ian more amused, especially because he just looks soft with his shirtless bedhead. "And how is that better?"

"You don't go to prison again, for one."

Mickey rolls his eyes.

"Fucking Mother Teresa," he says. "I can take care of myself just fine, you know."

But Ian's just smiling now. Fuck, he's always loved Mickey's grumpy little attitude, even when it was their second time and Mickey was fixing his scarf and pretending like it didn't matter. When he was in juvie and telling Ian to take his hand off the glass, then smiling like maybe Ian put butterflies in his stomach too. He's easy to read and he's so sweet, and today he's got this easy confidence on him that Ian thinks might have something to do with the two of them. He's seen it before, on the best days. Them in bed.

"Fuck you staring at?"

"Nothing," Ian says, but it's a totally blatant lie. Mickey probably knows, grin turning half-smug which only makes it worse. 

"Come here," he says then, and well – Ian leans in. 

It happened last night too, a relieving end to everything. They kissed, there on the couch, Ian's palm cupping the back of Mickey's head like it does right now. It was soft, and then they pulled apart, and Ian exhaled deeper than he had in a while, body heavy from all the tears but starting to let them go.

He showered then. They brushed their teeth. And then they went to bed.

Now they're here, kissing again, but this time they're smiling. Ian's hand in Mickey's hair, Mickey's on his jaw, legs meeting as Ian scoots closer under the duvet. He's missed this so much, the warmth and Mickey's smell, the slide of their hips together and his tongue slipping in. 

Mickey hums, pleased. Ian smiles against his lips.

They didn't do it like this yesterday. Too exhausted then, but he's happy now, and maybe a little mischievous as he lets his hand move from Mickey's hair and under the duvet, firm against his lower back to pull him further in. 

"Watch it," Mickey says.

"Or what?"

But they just keep kissing. And then they don't stop. 

*

They stay in the house that morning. They get up and they eat, they go back to bed, they kiss. They more than kiss, Ian down Mickey's chest and Mickey's hand in Ian's hair, caressing tenderly down to the back of his neck and up again, then stilling. His little noises swallowed up by the room, and Ian has missed this. Not just sex, but sex with him.

Afterwards he comes back up, grin that Mickey matches. He kisses him, deep and long, a couple of times and then some more, before they pull apart to lie side by side on the bed.

"Fuck that was good," Mickey says, head against the pillow all blissful. He's always got this specific smile he's worn afterwards, a certain kind of ease, like he simply feels good. Ian feels the same way he always has about it, like he wants to touch him, so he does. Arm around his chest.

"Yeah?" he asks. Pleased. But Mickey just shrugs, and that makes Ian smile too. 

He's never been one for needless flattery, but Ian's never wanted it. Not when Mickey's love is on his sleeve anyway, like it is right now, truth in the thing he just said and truth in the way he smiles back, like in some ways they're just two boys in a bed.

"I missed you, you know."

It's Ian who says it, and the most honest thing he's ever shared, but so simple because of exactly that. He did miss him, a lot. In heartbreaking ways and in happier ones, like the morning before his mom came back when everything was good. Mickey just smiles.

"Well," he says. "Good thing I'm back to tell you you're a boy scout again then."

"Fuck off."

But they're both so happy, and Ian thinks Mickey loves him. Really loves him actually, in a way he doesn't think he's really been loved before. With honesty and concern, with devotion and attention. Intentions too, only good, so unlike the shit that Ian's tried before.

He's better than most at it. A natural, while Ian feels like someone trying and trying and getting it wrong half the time, but trying again because it matters to him. Because maybe he's never been Lip, school so fucking easy, but he's always known how to sit down and do the work.

He doesn't say any of that. Instead he caresses Mickey's cheek with his thumb.

"I mean it, you know," he says. As true as before, only bigger now, and something he thinks he really needs Mickey to know. Mickey watches him, and then he smiles so warm, as he reaches up to caress his cheek back. Love so obvious that Ian just feels safe.

"I know," he says, not like he's just saying it but like he really does. "I missed you, too."

Ian smiles. Fuck, he just smiles, because Mickey's looking at him like maybe he's actually worthy of it all, hands still caressing over his hair.

"Now," he says then. "Do you want your turn or not?"

Ian snorts. And fuck, he imagines it, down his chest and further, something he hasn't felt in so fucking long; probably longer than he's ever gone without since he began. Not that being depressed really makes you in the mood, but he is in the mood now. But the past is still there.

"We still need to use a condom," he says. Embarrassed and half-terrified that remembering the fucking porn again will make it all come crashing down, but Mickey only gives a kind shrug like he already knew.

"It's okay," he says.

"And sometimes the meds still–"

"Ian."

Mickey's giving him a look. Half annoyed and half just amusing, the _shut up and just let me suck your dick_ implied. 

"Yeah, okay," Ian says, and then it really is. More than okay, actually, Mickey kissing him first and smiling into it, Ian's hands in his hair as he slips his tongue in. Deep and heavy, and maybe it won't be a problem actually, because fuck it's been a while since they did this, and Ian's body's absolutely waking up to it. Heat through his veins, and Mickey's smell, and how good it feels as he kisses Ian's neck.

"What did you say?" Mickey mumbles against his skin, and Ian smiles even as he shakes his head.

"Shut up," he says. But really they're fucking happy, and afterwards he lies with his arm across his eyes, as he breathes through the come-down and Mickey comes back up besides him. "It's just been a while, okay?"

"Sure, tough guy," Mickey says. "Pass me the smokes?"

Ian does, finding the carton on his bedside table and throwing it to the mattress, watching Mickey tap one out and sit up against the headboard, pillow supporting his back, to bring the lighter to it. For a moment he just looks, but then he gets himself out of the post-orgasm haze enough to sit up and join him.

It's sort of routine for them. Always has been, from the night after Mickey's first stint in juvie where they lingered around each other afterwards for the first time. Ian had stolen the cigarette out from Mickey's lips then, the whole thing a sort of stand-in for the kiss, and he does the same now just because Mickey will let him. And he does, although he also shoots him a look.

"Fuckhead," he says. Ian just hands him the cigarette back though, and leans his head against his shoulder. Despite his words, Mickey presses softly back with his own. 

"You tired?" he says.

"Kind of a long day yesterday."

"Yeah," Mickey says. It was, and as he hands the cigarette back over and Ian takes another drag, he thinks about that. About the crying, which honestly mortifies him a little bit, simply because it's not something he ever lets anyone see. But maybe Mickey's not anyone, and maybe it doesn't matter, because he doesn't seem to really mind. If anything, he's a bigger crier than Ian, and Ian's only feeling about that is love.

He doesn’t say that, but he thinks it. Mickey’s thinking something too, or so it seems from the way he watches it as he blows out smoke. Then he speaks.

"Your mom?"

It's barely a question, but it is one. Complicated and difficult, and Ian exhales.

"I don't really know," he says. "I got in a fight with her, but..."

He's fought with her before, standing in a field next to a van filled with meth and feeling so fucking angry that her life was still fucked. Wanting to fuck up that boyfriend of hers, a modern-day shithead who Ian knew he could have taken in a fight, the pure power of his rage making him stronger than he looked. Yet again so volatile, this part of him that doesn't know when or how to stop. But the anger's gone now.

"You think she'll stay this time?" Mickey asks. But Ian shakes his head.

He's always known she wouldn't, even as he's let her in. He knew the first time he ran to Mickey about her, and he knew it before her blood had ever coated the kitchen floor. He knew last time that it wouldn't last, just him running away for a while and using her to do it. And he knows that one day now, he'll wake up and she'll be gone.

"I'm sorry," Mickey says. Ian just shrugs again.

The thing is he wants to say that he doesn't forgive her, but he wouldn't survive being held to it. Maybe, if he's honest, he doesn't even want to say that. Maybe he thinks she neglected him, and maybe he still remembers: blood on the floor, a crack den, her voice on the prison phone. Her hands on his shoulders in a crowded club, Fiona's tears after she took the money from them. Her in bed, him trying to bring her toast, and Debbie downstairs saying that the odds are only one in five.

He's tired, to be honest. Not of her, but this story he's been trying to spin for himself, or maybe that everyone else has been trying to spin for him. At the military prison talking to her like a creation myth, bipolar mom who cheated on her husband to make him, her genes in his body like a roadmap of things already done wrong.

He loves her, is the thing. Probably always will because she was there in the kitchen, telling him he didn't need to be ashamed, or in the back of a van talking about dogs while he wore her scarf. On the other side of the glass because he asked her to be there, and still in his phone right now because in some ways, he doesn't think he wants to let her go.

He'll always be her son, anyway. He doesn't have to be, he knows, because he doesn't think of himself as Clayton's and fuck if he gives a shit about Frank, but he does about her, and the truth is it probably won't be burned out of him. But he's also over it now, this constant measuring up against someone else's failures, already stamped on his back like a fucking kick me sign. Instead he wants to get to at least make his own mistakes.

He looks up at Mickey then, who's still looking down at him. Smiles, a little sadly, but isn't actually that sad because he's here. With him.

"Yours left too, right?" he asks then.

He's heard about it, although more from Mandy than he has from him, Mickey always guarded with the details of his past. Just a kid herself when she had them both, really, which Ian thought of sometimes when he looked at the embroidery in Mickey’s old room that probably came from her. When he thought of other things too; the kind that made him want to put a bullet in Terry’s chest.

"Yeah," Mickey says. "A couple of times. Before she died."

Ian knew that too. Heard about it when it happened although she'd already left then, so Mandy delivered the news like it hardly felt real. It probably didn't, Ian thinks, especially to Mickey who hands the cigarette back over now, and who was stuck in juvie at the time. Ian remembers visiting him and not mentioning it, and Mickey not mentioning it either.

"What was she like?"

Mickey shrugs.

"Don't know," he says. "She tried, I guess. Took us trick or treating a couple of times, bought us Christmas presents even though Dad always took them before we got to them and pawned what he didn't want. Mandy loved her a lot, so..."

And Mickey did too. Ian can tell from the way he says it and the way he's not looking at him, avoiding his eyes like he used to do when things got too close.

"I'm sorry she died," Ian says. The same thing he said to Mandy, who avoided his eyes the exact way that Mickey does now, the two of them more alike sometimes than Ian thinks they know themselves. Tough exteriors with bleeding fucking hearts, and maybe that's why Ian loves them both so much. Because they're people who deserve it.

Mickey shrugs.

"Yeah. Sorry yours gave you the crazy genes."

Ian snorts, but quietly. And then he watches it as Mickey takes his hand in his own, and brings it to his lips to kiss the back of it. The kind of simple tenderness that he's so good at. 

The thing is, it's like he said. Him starting to sit there with his needle and his thread, unsewing the pieces of him that got wrapped up with Monica the first moment Frank got mad at him because the two of them looked too alike, or that first day when he ran away and started on the trajectory that eventually told him he was just like her. Him looking at his hands now, and breathing out.

"The nurse at the hospital," he says. "She told me Yev could have died."

That Ian could have killed him, really. That it could have happened while Ian was out turning tricks, which for a long time he didn't know how to face and still look at him. Which made him definitely feel like Monica two point oh.

"Kind of a miracle that Frank and Monica never did that to us."

"You didn't either," Mickey says. "Judging from the way he still screams his fucking head off when he's hungry, I'd say he's very much still alive."

The thought of that makes Ian smile. Maybe it shouldn't, because fuck if Yevgeny isn't another complicated thing, who Mickey didn't ask for and Ian didn't either, but still decided to take on while manic and seventeen. To feed and to clothe and to shop for, and to run away to Florida with.

Why, he's not sure. Maybe it's just that Yevgeny was a kid who needed someone, and that Ian knows what it's like to not be loved. Maybe it's that he thought it would be easier if he loved him, the trauma and loss of control less strong if he could simply spin it into something good. Or maybe it's that, even just a couple of days old, he had Mickey's eyes.

It's harder for Mickey, he thinks. Rightfully so, especially because fuck, hasn't all this shown that Ian has the opportunity to leave where Mickey just doesn't? So he looks at Mickey now, and takes the cigarette back from him.

"What do you want to do?" he asks. About the kid, he means. A question that Mickey's probably never been asked before, and that makes him turn his head to look at him. "If you could choose anything?"

"What are you getting at?"

"With him?" Ian says. Your kid, but he doesn't say that. Just watches him as he looks into the room and thinks, twitch to his lips that reveals all the shit going on inside. Then he shrugs.

"You love him," Mickey says. Ian nods. "Why?"

"He's a baby," Ian says. The same thing he just thought. "He kind of looks like you."

Mickey scoffs.

"Yeah. Kind of wish he didn't sometimes."

Ian's not surprised. Instead he watches it as Mickey rubs against his nose, the way he does sometimes when his emotions get too strong, and waits. Lets him go through it.

"I don't fucking know, man," Mickey says then. "I don't think I feel what I'm supposed to feel, but fuck knows what that even is. Used to not even be able to look at her fucking stomach, let alone him when she popped him out, but I guess I've been changing his diapers now."

And then he looks up.

"It's easier when you're here," he says. So fucking sincere that it kind of takes Ian aback, the way it does sometimes. _What you and I have makes me free,_ words out of Mickey's mouth so beautiful and honest, or maybe those two things are simply linked. The matter of fact nature of it changing everything. "Less like I'm trapped in some fucking life I didn't ask for, and more like, I don't know... I can handle it and shit."

Fuck, Ian thinks.

All he's ever wanted to do is ease Mickey's life. Really, since he was sixteen and fooling Kash enough to put money into Mickey’s commissary account so he could buy his cigarettes. Have stuff to negotiate with. Since he got him a job after that, and then again next year, and since he was manic and tried to make that stupid money from them. Since he tried to look after the kid while Mickey couldn't.

"I'm sorry," he says. "That I left you alone with him."

"That's not what I meant, man. You’ve got no obligation.”

"But still," Ian says. The kid wouldn’t exist without him anyway. That’s a terrible fucking thought but it’s also true, Ian a third party to all of it in more ways than one. And regardless, he thinks he has an obligation to Mickey, born not out of owing him stuff but out of love.

Mickey shrugs. But he's quiet and fuck, maybe there's not much to do here. Ian can't change the past of course, and he can't make the baby not exist. He can't carry this part of Mickey's pain either, although if he could he'd suck it all out like poison from a wound. But he can be there, and if it that makes it easier he can do it fucking tenfold too. So he looks at him.

"You think I could see him again then?" he asks. And as Mickey looks back he smiles, like maybe he understands.

"Yeah."

*

After that, life just keeps going on.

The next day they get tested, like Mickey suggested the night that Ian cried to him. It's probably one of the least fun things Ian's ever done, not so much because of the drawing of the blood, but because of all the questions he has to answer. _How many sexual partners? Protection? For which acts?_ But afterwards he gets to come out with a piece of paper to Mickey who's waiting for him, and declare that he's clean. 

"Not even one of the ones you treat with antibiotics," he jokes, but Mickey's too busy wiping his palm over his face with relief to really hear him.

"Fuck," he says. But then he looks up to grin, hand to the back of Ian's head with such fondness, and well – they go home to celebrate then, by which they fuck, and in the evening he gets to see Yevgeny again.

He's warm and so much bigger than he was before, but still so small in the grand scheme of things. He smells just like himself, and Ian smiles as he drops his nose to the top of his head.

"Hey," he whispers quietly. Breathes him in, long time, then presses a kiss to his temple; soft, like he's fragile, which he kind of is, love blooming in his chest despite everything. "You're so big now, huh?"

"Will stand soon," Mickey says. He's watching them from the dining table where he's just sat down and grabbed his pack of smokes, bringing one of them to his lips. "According to Svet, anyway."

"Sounds about right," Ian says, looking back to the kid. Soon, he'll be a toddler. Fuck, soon he'll speak, and act like a real person, and Ian doesn't know what they'll do then. What Mickey will feel, or what he will feel, but he guesses they'll figure it out. For now he's a baby anyways, making a baby sound as he looks up at Ian with big, Mickey-blue eyes.

Ian has missed him, honestly; strange, but still true. So he leans down to breathe him in again.

"Sorry I almost hurt you," he says. Not that he'll really understand what it means, but it matters to him, even though Mickey's at the table shaking his head.

"Does it look like he's hurt to you?" he says. But Ian shrugs. 

“Doesn’t matter. Kids deserve apologies too.”

He remembers wanting them anyway. That time his fever got deadly because they got left on the side of the street, him, Lip, and Fiona, when he was still just a kid. That time Frank punched him; both times, really. The times Monica hurt him in all her various ways, although unlike Frank who never said sorry, she often did.

Mickey just shrugs at the table. 

"Whatever," he says.

He's still got the smoke in his hand, and clearly he's a little on edge about the whole thing. Trying though, just a boy sitting in a chair instead of running, as brave as he's always been, so Ian smiles as he walks over to him. Frees one hand and cards it through his hair, guiding his head closer with a gentle hand. Then pressing a kiss to the top of it. 

He loves him and so he stays there, breathing in the scent of the cheapest dollar-store shampoo that he used before too. Mickey doesn't speak, but he worries his lip like he's feeling something, and Ian thinks that of all his traits, then most of all he's good.

After that, they help Ian's family move back in.

There's furniture to move, which Mickey is good at helping with, probably because of the moving scam he did this summer. There's boxes and other shit, and it takes them a couple of hours, but then the house almost looks like itself again. Reborn in familiar clothes, which Ian thinks there might be something poetic about.

Monica's still there. She's bringing in boxes from Kevin and Vee's when him and Mickey arrive, the two of them meeting on the pavement where they look at each other. A long time, before he shrugs and she responds with a grin and her palm to his cheek, all the things it's always been so difficult not to be drawn in by. It even makes him smile, as she tilts her head at him.

"I'm sorry, baby," she says. The kind of apology she's so good at, but which doesn't really mean anything. Still, he nods, and that night when they throw a Gallagher party to celebrate the move-in, he lets her pull him up to dance. Maybe, he guesses, even the chaos has familiarity.

In the end, he stands in the doorway watching them all with coke in hand. Mickey's upstairs for a second, and Lip was out smoking, but then he comes back in with his fingerless gloves and his cheeks rosy pink from the cold outside. 

“Hey,” Ian says. 

"Hey."

They smile at each other, warm living room light painting them in softness, which Ian thinks they need. Lip looks tired anyway, dark circles that Ian knows aren't just from the lateness of the night. He's not the only one things are hard for lately, but still Lip throws a cold arm around his shoulders in the doorway and steals his coke for a sip. In the living room, Monica and Liam are doing a dance.

"You know, you should think of it like this," Lip says. "At least you didn't inherit Monica's terrible dance moves."

"Fuck off," Ian says, but he's laughing too. It's feels good to make a fun of it anyway, at least with Lip, who places his hand on his head for a moment, the same way he used to do.

Ian remembers him asking it once; _name a single time I've ever let you down?_ To be honest, there are moments he can count on his fingers now, but there are probably moments that Lip can count too, and maybe it doesn't matter. Ian remembers other things too, anyway. How the first time Frank hit him in the face, Fiona was the one to put her foot down so he wouldn't do it again, but Lip was the one who came upstairs to sit with him.

Now Lip speaks.

"Mickey, huh?" he says, and Ian snorts.

"Yeah. Which one of you won the bet?"

"Well, I wouldn't say any of us are exactly surprised."

"Right."

He's definitely teasing, but Ian doesn't mind. Fuck, even he probably knew somewhere deep down or maybe even not that deep, that this definitely wouldn't be the end. 

The thing is, they're still there. Mistakes in his pockets like stones, or the expression on Mickey's face as he asked if Ian really meant it and he said yes. And he did, back then, in a way he can't diminish even now, because he still remembers the way it felt. This wanting to disappear and find something new to be in another town, him on a field in his mother's scarf and Mickey's picture against the stars and the thought that he was gonna have to leave.

But it's different now. There's hope in his chest and less desire to scream, the signs on the road he's driving no longer leading to dead-ends but forward, the way he wants to them to. 

Because he wants to things to be better. To plant his hope with good seeds, and tend to it, and watch it grown back in all the places it was scorched away. To remember what it was like to believe, and to be with Mickey again and make it work.

Back in the living room, Monica and Frank are swaying together now. Him and Lip both look at them.

"You think we're them?"

It's Lip who asks the question. Real, like he's actually wondering, and a month ago Ian wouldn't have known what to say. Would have felt like the answer was yes, a terrible development from the two of them being boys in their bedroom joking about inheriting their parents shitty genes. But for the first time in fucking forever now, he's able to shake his head.

"No," he says. To himself for one, but also to Lip.

He's not blind, is the thing. Instead he remembers that summer with Karen, Lip sitting on the pavement drinking six beers by noon, and instead he's noticed it picking up again now. Shaking hands, alcohol breath, and those bloodshot, tired eyes. So he looks at him.

"You're gonna be okay, you know?" he says. Lip raises his brows at him.

"Are you the big brother now?" 

"Nah, not big," Ian says. "But a brother."

One who's concerned. Who sees him and who loves him, which he doesn't say but thinks as he meets Lip's eyes for a while. Lip looks back, serious, and then he smiles.

"Well, look how the tables turn," he says, and Ian smiles too, as Lip squeezes him closer by the arm around his shoulders, care not a one-way street for either of them. It's probably never been.

It's not long after that that Mickey comes down again, and the two of them switch places, Lip cocky enough to pat Mickey's shoulder as he leaves, despite Mickey's returning scowl. Ian just puts his arm around his shoulders, a movement copied from what Lip just did to him, and thinks that maybe he's lucky he gets to have this. A warm house and his family and a kiss to Mickey's cheek, as Mickey looks at him.

"Hey," Ian says. Happy as he grabs Mickey's beer and steals a quick swig from him, back in his hand before he even has time to complain, although he gives him a look anyway. "So I have a question for you. On a scale from one to five, how likely is it that I'll get you to dance with me."

"Zero."

"One means very, actually."

Mickey shakes his head, faux-annoyed but even his beer-bottle against his lips can't hide his smile. 

"You're kind of a nuisance, you know," he says, but it's not convincing at all, and instead Ian stands there and remembers something. This moment after he'd run away to Monica last time, standing on the street in the five AM morning light. Trying to catch a car to get back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... what do we think? it's not completely over yet we're doing an epilogue after this which i think will be out soon, so don't give away all your horses yet or do, i'm not your boss. but even though it took me 5000 years to reply last time i really do love to hear from you so much, so feel very free to let me know what you thought in the comments! 
> 
> also happy baby anniversary to the boys! and if you want i'm still on [tumblr](https://himick.tumblr.com) where you can follow me - i just learned how to make gifs


	12. 12 – Mickey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's time for the epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys... we did it, we made it to the end 🎉 🎉 just in time for s11 too, let's go!! anyway, thank you for sticking by this all the way to here. and i hope you'll enjoy this last moment of softness for them

A couple of months later, Mickey wakes up to Ian's arm around him and Ian's mouth to the back of his neck.

They're in the Gallagher house, where they've been living for a while. In the accordion door room, where they stayed those nights with Mickey sleeping over too, and where they've settled down with their stuff in the same drawer again. It fits them right now, with Debbie about to pop, the rest of the family slowly dragging themselves out of the mess of these last six months, and Ian probably needing to be closer to them all than he was when they were living apart. 

It also means they have privacy now. Privacy which means that Ian cam him against his skin, the mouth on his neck turning into a kiss beneath his ear, breath out then in as he smells like a fucking creep. Mickey smiles to himself.

Ian knows that he's awake, for sure. If the kiss wasn't proof enough, then the arm around his waist dragging him closer definitely is, followed by the way he leans in over him as if to look at his face.

"What are you doing?" Mickey says. It comes out mostly like a pleased mumble though, the joy of waking up under a warm duvet with this boy who he loves so much plastered against his back never lost on him.

"Nothing," Ian says, lying back on the mattress behind him. "Woke up two hours ago."

Ah, Mickey thinks. Not surprising, honestly, considering what today is, and Mickey's kind of impressed he even managed to fall asleep in the first place. Not that it didn't take a while.

"Could use a distraction."

"Oh?" Mickey says. "Is that all I'm good for now?"

But his voice betrays him once again, revealing his smile. Then Ian's shift betrays what's gonna happen before it does, hand used to tug him onto his back and then to his other side, the two of them facing each other as Mickey grins with delight.

"What?" he says.

"You don't wanna distract me?"

"I didn't say that."

They both smile then. Ian's hair is a mess, auburn flames like a halo, which probably means he was running his hands through it while Mickey slept. He still looks happy though, like Mickey's enough to distract him for right now, and that makes Mickey's chest expand with something warm and hopeful.

It's his EMT exam today.

Mickey's had it circled on his mental calendar for weeks, because he knows that's it important. A new dream, a new hope, and fuck it, also something that actually fits his stupid bleeding heart that makes him care so much about his family and even random strangers being okay.

It makes sense then, that he's nervous. Mickey remembers that summer he was fighting with Lip anyway, how adamantly he studied, and how terrible he felt whenever the math tests came back with C's anyway. He's always had this desire to _be_ something, and now he probably has one to prove himself too. 

Not that he's talking about that now. Instead he's studying Mickey's face; eyes first, then lips, until they look at each other and Mickey shrugs and Ian leans in. 

It's a good morning when it starts like this. Ian's lips on his, Ian's palm on his cheek, Ian's smile against his lips. Ian's leg slowly sliding in-between his.

Yeah, he likes that. Familiar and good in a way that makes his legs part to make room for him, as he turns onto his back and Ian turns with him, giant, lanky body covering him with comforting heat. Then more kissing, and Mickey lifting his arms up to hold him, loose embrace as warmth travels down his spine.

"Feels nice."

An understatement, really. But an honest one. 

"We have twenty minutes," Ian says. 

"Shouldn't I be the one distracting you?"

Ian looks up at him. His hair's even worse now honestly, fluffy and matching his lips which are a little red from the kissing. He looks a little tired too, circles under his eyes revealing how long he's been awake, but he still looks so much more alive than he did just a little while ago. Still, he's biting his lip as if he's thinking of the question, and then he shrugs.

"Not sure that's gonna work today," he says. Tone a little embarrassed, although it doesn't have to be. It's just nerves or maybe the meds, and Mickey couldn't give a shit, but Ian does, so he shifts to run his fingers through his hair anyway. 

"You know," he says, intending to be comforting. "You've eaten discipline for breakfast for fucking months. Pretty sure you could take over the role as examinator at this point."

"That might be pushing it a little," Ian says. He's smiling though. 

"Say that to me quizzing you last night." When Ian hadn't even let him get through the questions before he started answering. "Or me from Sunday when you tried to make me go for a run."

Ian snorts at that. He _had_ tried, and Mickey had told him to fuck right off, but they'd made out when he came back all sweaty anyway. A good day, if you ask him.

"Whatever," Ian says. "If you don't want to kiss me, I guess–"

But Mickey pulls him in before he can even finish his sentence, to Ian's clear delight, both of their smiles making it all clumsy at first.

"Happy, your fucking highness?" he says, and Ian hums. 

"Yeah."

It's new that he's like this. Or at least it's new in comparison to when he first found out he was sick, when the idea of needing any form of help seemed to really fucking bother him. Not that it doesn't still do it now, or that Mickey's not sure to earn himself a pair of rolled eyes or a half-petty comment if he tries to encroach on Ian's territory with the meds. But he's more willing to ask for kindness, like this. For help.

Of course Mickey gives it, then. Not that it's particularly difficult when doing so looks like this.

By the time their alarm rings, they've been awake for twenty minutes, and kissing for eighteen of them. Ian's hair has gotten worse, which only makes it funnier as he drops his head to groan into Mickey's chest.

"Relax, G.I. Joe," Mickey says. He's holding onto the back of his head, caressing it, trying not to be too amused about his dumb fucking dramatics. "Go shower, get dressed, I'll make us some food, okay?"

"Mick," Ian says. "I might fail, you know."

"You won't," Mickey says.

"But I might."

"And that would be the absolute end of the world. No second tries for mister Ian Gallagher."

"More like the tenth."

Mickey just looks at him. He's always been dramatic about this stuff, but he also has a tendency to get lost in his head, so Mickey pats the back of it. 

"Come on," he says. They need to get moving anyway, so he extracts himself from under him, sad to let the warmth of him go but knowing it has to be done. Then he finds some boxers, puts them on, and finds another pair for Ian, who's sat up in the bed too. "Here."

He throws them at him, watching them land on their duvet in his lap.

"Shower, boxers, jeans, shirt. Can you do that for me?"

Ian gives him a look.

"Dick," he says. There's a smile there though, color in his cheeks, and Mickey knows he knows; that Mickey's just trying to calm him down because he loves him. "Mick?"

"Yeah?" Mickey says.

"Thanks."

He doesn't need to thank him. Mickey would do all this and more a thousand times over for him, and that sort of devotion is not something people ever praised him for before. In his family loyalty's a given, and it is in Ian's too, but he also understands: sometimes there's stock in words. And sometimes it's nice to hear.

"Whatever," he says, but he doesn't really mean it. Instead he comes over by the side of the bed again, to where Ian's sitting. And then he leans down to press a kiss to the top of his head. "I love you."

Ian grins. Warm and so real and almost shy, the way he's taken to doing it whenever Mickey tells him that. In awe, like the truth of the information is still amazing to him, in a way that Mickey's realizing it probably is. So he ruffles his hair too, before he lets him go.

"Now get ready, Cinderella," he adds. "I'll see you downstairs, okay?"

When he gets there, the kitchen's full. Liam's on a chair eating cereal next to Fiona and Lip, both on their phones. He grunts out a _morning_ to both of them, as he moves towards the coffee pot, still half-full. 

Things are going better for them too, or so he understands. There's a happier energy back in the house anyway. Carl has stopped with the trade and started having sex with some chick instead, which is information that Ian found hilarious and Mickey really didn't need to know. Lip's still half in and out of his own shit, but better than before according to Ian, and Debbie's begging for days with Yevgeny to practice for the day she squirts out her own little kid, which Mickey gladly gives to her whenever Svetlana isn't around to disagree. 

That's going okay too, or as okay as the whole thing really can. Ian's hooked on the baby again, they got a schedule down like a couple of middle class divorcees, and that's another thing. Since their whole little arrangement stopped being something that could actually convince a deportation officer in any way, she's been looking at other options, which means that maybe someday soon he'll some real papers to sign that will actually make him free in that way.

He's happy, then. Really, in a way that has him smiling to himself as he gets out the eggs from the fridge, planning to scramble them. A way that only grows the moment he hears Ian's footsteps down the stairs, hair wet but clothes on as he comes into view, and then as he comes up to his side.

"Look," he says. "Boxers, jeans, shirt."

"A+"

Ian smiles at that, leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek, before he moves to get down two plates from the cupboard. Then he adds the bread Mickey put in the toaster to them, and holds them out for the eggs, which Mickey adds from the pan, coordinated movements happening with practiced ease.

"You still gonna drive me?" he asks.

"Said I would, didn't I?"

He's the only with a car in this shit-hole anyway.

"You ready?" Lip asks then. He's at the table, looking up along with Fiona, both of them watching him. Ian shrugs as he dumps down on the chair besides him. 

"You quizzed me," he says. "What do you think?"

Lip smiles, and reaches up to squeeze the back of his neck.

"I think you'll break a leg."

He will, of course. If nothing else because everyone has come together, running through the questions with him whenever he's asked him to. Lip, Fiona, Carl, even Debbie sometimes when she hasn't been busy reading fucking baby books. And that's been good for him, Mickey knows. To be entrenched with his family again who he loves so much, which is one of the things that Mickey's always loved about him.

The thing is, that part's true. That the thing that's made all of this worth it, is this deep, unwavering love that he's got for this stupid, petty, dorky, disciplined, worried boy, who's smiling at his brother like he loves him, because he does. And the thing is that all Mickey really wants is for him to be okay.

That's love to him anyway, and it always has been; protecting people, getting them whatever stuff they need, trying to ease their lives. Wanting to see them safe and healthy and happy, which means that watching him now with Lip's tender hand on his shoulder and a smile on his face, even in the face of his nerves, is part of the shit that's started to finally bring him peace.

About an hour later then, he does what he said he'd do. He gets into the Milkovich car and drives Ian to school, and then he entertains himself before he drives back again. When Ian comes out, he's grinning, like Mickey knew he would.

"So?" he says. 

"Top scores."

Like anyone's surprised.

"Of course. Fucking nerd."

But Ian doesn't seem to be bothered by the bantering. Instead he smiles so fucking big and Mickey loves him so fucking much, so he smiles too, and then Ian leans in.

At first they just hold each other right there on the street. Something that Mickey couldn't have done just a couple of years ago - fuck, one year ago - but that seems so natural now. And then they kiss too. 

"So what now?" Mickey asks, as they pull apart again. With this, he means, but also with everything else. Ian's job, the future. Them.

Ian looks at him. Kiss-pink lips, and happy eyes, and then he just shrugs.

"You wanna go to Sizzlers?" he says. And fuck it, Mickey thinks - that sounds like a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, there we go. as always i'd love to hear from you about this or the whole thing or just anything else. and thanks for sticking by this again! it took us a while asdfgh but y'all made the ride fun
> 
> also if you wanna vibe with me about s11 then y'all probably know, but my tumblr can be found [here](https://himick.tumblr.com). that's all, i think. see you later alligator 🐊


End file.
